Hearing Silence
by crestoflight3
Summary: "Silence. Eternal Silence." A voice keeps saying that, but the figure behind the voice is never seen. The Doctor along with Amy and Rory Pond find themselves in a strangely quiet world. A mystery unlike any other appears, along with a familiar face. Set before season 6.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, or any series, books, or plot lines associated with it. The work done on this site is purely for amusement, not to be taken as an infringement of a copyright.**

**Quick Bio: Crestoflight3 here. Chances are you've never read my stories before. I mainly write for Digimon Adventure, and am running several comedy stories to last til further ado. However, this idea popped in my mind after my sister described a dream she had about Eleven and Rose, so I decided to finally write this. This is not related to the dream in any way besides the characterization. Mind, this is my first fic for Doctor Who, so please be kind and leave advice.**

**Note: Each chapter will follow a specific character as the person mainly followed. This may become important later on. Chapter One follows Rory Pond.

* * *

**"Okay, so what should we do now?"

"Oh, Doctor, can't we have a break for once? We were barely done with our honeymoon before you whisked us off to see that shiny thingy…"

"Hey, that was a perfectly good excuse! They needed us to solve a public debate before a war broke out!"

"Um, time machine? Remember?"

"Rory Pond, be quiet."

Rory shook his head, his shaggy hair flying about his face. The Doctor was at the consul of the Tardis, pushing what appeared to Rory to be random buttons. Amy was leaning off of the railing, her arms crossed.

"Can't I have any time with my husband?"

"You have plenty of time. See? Right now. Five whole minutes have been wasted complaining on whether we could take a break or not."

Her expression didn't change. "Doctor. Come on! One day, that's all I'm asking for. One day at the beach…" A faraway expression entered her face.

The Doctor looked up from the console, a knowledgeable expression filling his face as his eyes flicked from Rory to rest on Amy. "Rio?"

Amy went next to him. "You did promise…"

"Okay, okay! We'll go to Rio! Happy, are you?"

Mrs. Pond jumped up and down, her battle won. "Yep! Hear that, Rory? We're finally heading to sunglasses and tanning!"

Rory smiled at his wife's accent, the voice he had grown up with. She had this way to induce enthusiasm when all he wanted was a nap. For some odd reason, the Doctor never slept, and Amy and Rory only got their naps in by the few odd times he was off studying something or catching up with an old, or new, friend.

However, Rory didn't think he'd be able to give up this life. He understood why Amy had been so amazed by the Time Lord when she was so young—he was so eccentric, so exciting, so dangerous, yet he got under your skin, made you want to prove that you were worth his attention. Whatever the reason, Rory didn't think he'd be able to pull himself away from the traveling…let alone his wife. His Amy.

Currently, she was pressing buttons, the Doctor's hand guiding hers, often pulling it up moments before she touched it as he changed his mind. Rory no longer saw him as a threat—more of a common ground between the amazing and the ordinary. And Rory no longer considered himself the main ordinary person anymore.

"There we go!" Smiling, Amy pulled the lever, initiating the Tardis to start its…well, its travel. Its time-and-space movement. Rory would have to ask for the word to describe it…

Suddenly, the Tardis pitched, more than normal. Rory grabbed onto a railing and, with his other hand, reached for Amy. Her hand found his and held on tightly. "Doctor, what's going on? Did I press a wrong button?"

"No…no, no. I was watching you…you couldn't of…no! No way!" The Doctor was examining a screen filled with incomprehensible symbols—the language of Gallifrey, he once said. His face was full of disbelief. Not panic, but certainly doubt.

The Doctor doubting something. That was never a good thing.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Rory said, suddenly glad he wasn't asleep—he would have been tossed all around by now.

"This isn't supposed to be happening! This can't be happening. There isn't any logical explanation. Not saying that logic was never faulty before, but this, this defies all logic and non-logic!"

"Doctor, spit it out, why don't you?" Amy said, sounding bossy and worried.

"I don't know. The Tardis won't tell me anything. It just keeps on saying, on this screen, 'Silence. Eternal Silence.'" He stared for a moment, his expression empty and vacated. "What does that mean?"

"Doctor, you were saying that there was no way…no way for what?" said Rory, trying to keep a grip. He wasn't supposed to panic. He had a wife who was staying calmer than he was.

"It says we aren't in our world anymore. But, well, that's just impossible. I mean, all of the other worlds were closed off when Davros…I saw to it that they closed! This would make it the, what, second time? Third? No, there's no way…the Tardis must have a loose wire or something," he stopped talking. Something was different.

Amy figured it out first. "We've landed," she said, looking toward the Tardis door.

"Okay, now would be a good time to try to leave-," Rory said, looking around nervously.

The Doctor ignored him. "Wonder what's out there."

Amy smiled a sly smile. "You know, Rory's right. We _should_ leave…"

The Doctor gave her a stern glare. "And why would I listen to Mr. Pond over there?"

Rory muffled a "Hey," followed by a small "ow" as Amy kicked him. "Hey, I never said I agreed. Just that he's being smart."

"Oh, so running away from an adventure is 'smart'?" The Doctor was smiling now.

"Well, we could always take a quick look outside…"

"Amy, be quiet," Rory whispered. "Do you want us to get stuck in some strange world—oh, of course, being you, you would want us to get stuck on some strange world. Never mind."

"So, can we?" she went to the Doctor, looking as though she already knew the answer. Unfortunately, so did Rory.

"Well," the Doctor said, eyeing the door, "the Tardis _does _need a small break to regain its flying mechanism, seeing as we basically crash landed here, a fact I don't appreciate, so…"

Amy grabbed her red scarf before heading to open the door. "Ready?"

"Set," said the Doctor. When the next phrase wasn't added, both glared at Rory.

"What? Oh. Um, go?"

Together, with Rory in the middle, Amy and the Doctor opened the Tardis doors to a strange new world.

* * *

Strange really wasn't the best way to describe it. At least, that's what Rory thought. Actually, it was pretty normal. More than normal. If he would have been able to say it without getting a punch or another kick from his wife, Rory would have described the landscape that greeted them with one word: boring.

Not that it wasn't pretty or anything. It appeared the Tardis had 'crash-landed' in a small clearing in the middle of a wooded area, a high cliff extending up from one side, while a gentler valley followed from the other, only to rise and create another hill. This pattern followed into a mountain setting, heavily wooded and filled with ferns and roots.

Yes, it was beautiful. But it wasn't all outer-spacey, like Rory had come to expect from their travels. Even when they went to Italy, it still had creepy alien vampire women. It didn't look like vampires would be here.

Amy had obviously noticed this, too. She stopped staring around in wonder, instead glaring at the Doctor. He must have noticed this, for he too stopped his inspection and turned to look at Amy, his eyes still swiveling around and absorbing the landscape.

"Well? What's this?" she said, her face scrunched up as if she had been handed a tub of melted ice cream—disappointed and annoyed.

"What's what?" The Doctor replied, now looking to the sky, which was a cloudy shade of grey.

"Why are we in the middle of a wood? A wood, of all things," she said, looking around as if the wood had done her an injustice.

"Well, if I knew, I would have told you, wouldn't I?"

Rory decided to mention something. "Um, Doctor, I think I see—"

"Not now, Rory. Amy, you're right. Why did the Tardis land in the middle of a forest? There's nothing here, nothing at all. Unless you count the trees and ferns and squirrels—wait. Where are the squirrels?"

He was correct, as usual. There were no animals. There was no movement besides the three of them. There wasn't even visible wind.

Rory had already noticed this, and was trying again to tell the Doctor something he knew to be of importance. "Doctor, I—."

"Really, I've been to tons of places. I've even been to the middle of this desert world, well, not so much sand as the remains of a civilization—but, of everything I've seen, this is eerier than most. Nothing moving. I've been in a library with nothing but books and shadows, and there was more movement there than there is here, in this woods," he said, squatting down to pick up a leaf. He turned it over in his hand a few times, looking at its healthy green shade. Quietly, he murmured, "What's so different about this place?"

"Doctor, there's—."

"Wait, what's that?" The Doctor was looking up at the sky again, drawing Amy's attention.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," said Rory, annoyed. "Smoke."

Sure enough, a thin line of dark smoke stood outlined in the grey sky, trickling off to their right. "Wherever that smoke is, there must be somebody. Or something," came the Doctor.

Amy's eyes twinkled, and she put her red hair in a quick ponytail, pulling strands off her denim jacket and red shirt underneath. She used her scarf as a quick bandana, and began striding forward. Within seconds, both Rory and the Doctor had grabbed each of her arms and pulled her back.

She moaned. "Come on? What? There's smoke, there's wind, there's got to be people. Somebody, you said."

The Doctor let her go, standing erect, his body facing the cliff but his head turned ninety degrees to watch the smoke. "I said somebody or something. And I'm not sure if the something would be friendly."

Amy stopped struggling, joining her two men in staring at the phenomenon. "Something. That's not good, is it?"

"It doesn't sound good," said her husband, dropping his hand down from her upper arm to her hand. She took hold of it and squeezed gently.

"You know what, I hate saying this, but, right now, I'd rather not know. There's nothing wrong here—in fact, this is the most peaceful place I've seen in a long time," came the Time Lord in a low tone.

"Too peaceful," Mrs. Pond added, her tone matching his.

"We should leave…?" Rory said, hesitant. Suddenly, leaving wasn't nearly as great sounding.

While the three stood, entranced, a sound came from behind. All three jumped in shock at the sound approaching.

The sound of footsteps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Doctor Who is about thirty years old. I'm half of that age, so, logically, I can't own Doctor Who. All material published on this sight is for pure practice in writing, along with individual amusement. No profit is being made.**

**Quick Note: This is my second attempt at this chapter...the other attempt I made was rushing things too much. I still don't really know who the bad guy is, but that will come to me. It had better come to me. Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who favorited, suscribed, and reviewed Chapter 1...I was amazed at my reception. Thank you all so much, and I hope I can continue to create a story I, as well as you readers, enjoy.**

**Note: Each chapter will follow a specific character as the main focus, while the voice may remain third-person omniscient. This voicing may become important later on. Chapter Two follows Amy Pond.  
**

* * *

"_You know what, I hate saying this, but, right now, I'd rather not know. There's nothing wrong here—in fact, this is the most peaceful place I've seen in a long time," came the Time Lord in a low tone._

_ "Too peaceful," Mrs. Pond added, her tone matching his._

_ "We should leave…?" Rory said, hesitant. Suddenly, leaving wasn't nearly as great sounding._

_ While the three stood, entranced, a sound came from behind. All three jumped in shock at the sound approaching._

_ The sound of footsteps._

* * *

Amy turned around suddenly, the Doctor and Rory following her lead. Something was coming, drawing nearer. All three stood transfixed, listening to the sound of the crunch of leaves and the rustle of ferns.

Amy's breath caught in her throat. How many times had this situation occurred, that wait for the inevitable confrontation? Or greeting, since, sometimes, the passerby was friendly. But, still, that wait before the appearance. She wasn't afraid, not remotely. She would stand and face whatever it was, like she had every time before.

Beside her, Rory's grip on her hand had gone from a gentle reminder to a strong acclamation. He, if the only one, didn't enjoy the thrill before the meeting. The Doctor, on the other hand, seemed to live for them. Right now, he was standing still, head tilted, looking in the direction of the upcoming footsteps, a slight smile evident on his face. Whatever doubt he had held about staying here before was long gone, in favor of the realization of a mystery.

The three jumped again as a new sound filled the vicinity—another sound of movement, this time coming from the direction of the smoke.

"Great," came Rory under his breath, "attacked on both sides."

"Oh, don't be such a pessimist! It could be friendly…" came the Doctor's reprimand. Both men had turned to look in the direction of the new sound.

"Or," said Amy, still looking in the direction of the original footsteps, "it might not be." Together, they waited.

Both sounds grew closer, closing in. Whatever the second sound was, it sounded to be bigger than the first sound, and moving faster.

Suddenly, a sight crossed Amy's line of vision, through a gap in the thicket. A gap that she hadn't seen there before. Before she had time to wonder what it was, the shape was gone—a mix of yellow, black, and skin-tone. It was gone before Amy could see any details, but, still, it had been there.

"Amy?" It was the Doctor. He was looking at her in a mix of concern and anticipation.

"Nothing. I—I don't know…it was nothing," she said. She turned away from the thicket and toward the valley in the direction of the new sound.

Rory looked at her, then behind them. "Wait," he said, squinting his eyes, "the other sound, those footsteps we first heard…they're gone."

"It would appear so," came the Doctor, who had turned back toward the new sound.

"But…it was here, it was coming closer. Now where'd it go?"

The Doctor remained silent, his face a grim mask of contemplation. He was obviously thinking of something—now, if only Amy could read his mind and find a way to help.

A sudden high-pitched squeal covered up the footsteps. The trio covered their ears, squinting in the pain of sudden sound. Where there had once been silence now lay a cover of noise—shrieks and shots, cries and joyful shouts. Any and every sound, that's what Amy thought while she tried to block it out. Any and every joyful laugh and tearful goodbye, quiet sob and appreciative hug—every scream of fear and cry of anguish filled the air around them. Around the world.

It was gone as soon as it started, and only silence remained behind like before. Gone with the squeal were the footsteps.

The Doctor looked up, at the sky, as if it could hold the answer.

"Doctor, what was that?" Amy said, glaring at him with her big eyes. Rory joined her lead.

"Doctor?"

"I don't know," he murmured.

Amy threw her hands in the air. "Doctor, whatever that was, you must have an idea. Anything."

When he didn't say anything, Rory decided to intervene. "Well, whatever it was, it was not friendly. I think we should leave."

"Rory, shut up!"

"No, Amy. This isn't right. I don't know why, but I can feel it—so can you. No sound except for us, then an eruption of it. Whatever it is, it doesn't want us here," Rory said, taking hold of his wife's hands. She pulled herself free and crossed them around her chest in an act of defiance.

"Doctor, what should we do?"

"We should…leave. Rory's right, this place isn't for us," he said, still looking at the sky. "But that's the answer from two minutes ago. Two minutes ago, this place was still silent except for our gibbering. Maybe that's what upset it, why it came to warn us away. Whatever it is. Seeing as the 'silence' was broken."

"So, that's it? We're just going to leave?" Amy felt defeated. It was either they had too much adventure or too little—they never just ran away. She had tried that before, with the star whale. The Doctor never abandoned a mystery or somebody in need.

"No. That isn't what I said." The Doctor spared himself a brief look at Amy, a flicker of recognition before returning his gaze at the sky.

"But you just said we should leave…"

"No, Pond, I just said that we should have left two minutes ago. Now, however, there's something here that I've never seen before. Whether I want to or not, I'm staying to see it through."

"Why do we always have to stay?" Rory was looking at Amy, but she ignored him, focusing on the Doctor.

"Why do we have to stay?"

"Because," the Time Lord said, taking his attention off of the sky and onto the couple beside him, "like Rory said, that thing, whatever it was—it wasn't right. I want to see what it is, and why I've never heard of it."

"Oh, so logical. Wanting to see something that sounded just pure evil."

"Rory, please be quiet for once in your life," the Doctor said, a brief grin alighting his face.

"So, we're staying?"

"Yep. Though we aren't taking the Tardis. She might attract attention, and since we don't know who the inhabitants are, we don't want to get the wrong first impression. So," he jumped over to the blue box, fiddling with the keyhole, "I'm going to park her inside that thicket, we're going to collect a few belongings, and, then, well…" He opened the door, leaning inside. "I hadn't really thought that far ahead…"

"Then we search. Investigate," Amy suggested.

"Yes! Then we investigate!" The Doctor ran into the Tardis, Amy following closely.

"Look, we aren't Sherlock Holmes or Mystery Inc. We don't even have a cool van..." Rory said, slowly making his way to the Tardis. The Doctor leaned his head out.

"Well, if you want a cool flowered van, go and rent one. While you do that, we'll make ourselves comfortable."

Rory huffed and moved forward, pushing the grinning Doctor aside as he entered and leaned next to Amy on the rail. The Doctor began pushing buttons carefully, and the Tardis materialized inside a ring of trees. Grabbing a few necessities—psychic paper, Amy's handbag, Rory's ID—they left the Tardis, fought their way out of the tightly wound trees, and back into the clearing.

Amy looked around. "So, Doctor, where are we heading?"

The Doctor looked out, turning in a few circles before pointing. "That a-way."

"Toward the smoke?" Rory asked, noticing the newly induced smoke issuing again.

"Yes, Mr. Pond. Toward the smoke. Toward the biggest hint of a civilization we've got." With that, the Doctor started walking. Mr. and Mrs. Pond exchanged a long glance, Amy's full of excitement, Rory's full of anxiety, before heading after the raggedy doctor.

* * *

Inside the Tardis, on the screen next to the console, Gallifreyen words still ran.

_Eternal Silence._


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't have any affiliation with Doctor Who. All material written on this site is fan made and not to be taken seriously. No personal profit is made...okay, so reviews are personal profit, but I don't think they count...**

**Quick Note: Again, a second attempt at this chapter. I've changed from one setting idea to a completely different one that works more for me, so I hope you enjoy it. I have also started to read more Doctor Who published books, so I'm trying to maintain my style while keeping it similar to Doctor Who...**

**Note: Each chapter will follow a different character as the main header. I will never do the Doctor, just to warn you. This chapter follows Rory again. The next chapter will follow Amy, then Rory, then...should I tell you? Nope...  
**

_

* * *

Amy looked around. "So, Doctor, where are we heading?"_

_ The Doctor looked out, turning in a few circles before pointing. "That a-way."_

_ "Toward the smoke?" Rory asked, noticing the newly induced smoke issuing again._

_ "Yes, Mr. Pond. Toward the smoke. Toward the biggest hint of a civilization we've got." With that, the Doctor started walking. Mr. and Mrs. Pond exchanged a long glance, Amy's full of excitement, Rory's full of anxiety, before heading after the raggedy doctor._

A few hours later, and Rory still held in his belief that this idea was, to say the least, not well thought out. They could have just teleported there or something—maybe find a way to fly there, or get something mobile—but no, they had to walk. Walk toward the creepy smoke issuing from miles off. Walk through the mountains and woods and get lost half a dozen times. Not well thought out, to say the least.

Of course, Rory could say more, but he'd rather not get another kick from his beloved wife, who somehow appeared to be enjoying this journey for the first few minutes. After about an hour in, though, as the talking stopped and was replaced by that heavy silence, her smile became less pronounced; her walk contained less of a bounce.

After a few more hours, and even the Doctor was getting annoyed. "Honestly," he said, grimacing and strutting forward, leaving Amy and Rory in the dust, "how do humans do this every day?"

"I thought you lived for the running?" Amy said, glaring at his back. Rory chuckled.

"The running, yes—that's cool. The random walking and not getting anywhere, on the other hand…" the Doctor trailed off, looking down toward the newest valley coming in front of him. "Ah."

"Ah. What were you saying about not getting anywhere?" Amy and Rory came up to the Doctor, standing next to him.

"Looks like we found the mysterious smoke," Rory said, his brown hair billowing as a silent wind picked up from behind them. Amy fought to keep her red hair out of her eyes as she stared at the bottom of the valley.

"Mysterious smoke…check. Silent wind…check. Dismal outpost…check again. Full of checks, this place," the Doctor said, standing still.

The view in question was, as the Doctor had said, a small grey building, appearing to be a type of steel, with iron rusted fences surrounding the outpost. No door was visible, but grey smoke was issuing out of a pipe at the top; not as much smoke as a factory would let out, but more than a normal home.

The building was silent. No movement was apparent besides the smoke. It appeared abandoned.

"Doctor, what is this place?" Amy asked, her eyes not leaving the building standing in the middle of the forest.

The Doctor, on the other hand, was searching the surroundings with his eyes; it was as if the building was a small feature amidst a more notable area. "How am I to know? Some sort of outpost…"

"You said that already," Rory chimed in. "What kind of outpost?"

"An outpost…I don't know, there isn't exactly signs, is there? We'll have to go in to see more."

"No. I am not going in a creepy and silent building in the middle of a creepy and silent wood!"

"Rory. There's something out here, something I don't understand. You can stay here and watch from the outside, or you can get a taste of adventure. What's it going to be?"

Rory pretended to think for a minute. "Hmm, let's see, I'll stay outside. I've had my fair share of adventures. Namely, when I stopped existing and then turned into a bloody Roman soldier!"

Amy smiled. "But you aren't a soldier anymore. You're back to being just Rory."

"Exactly! Just Rory! I can't do anything cool, or…or see through in the dark, even. I can barely hear myself over this wind! How am I supposed to do anything adventurous…" He stopped when he realized what he had said. Amy and the Doctor stared at him.

"The noise…it's back," Amy said, trying to hold back the shock.

"Yeah, I'd say it's back…" The Doctor held up his hand.

"But what is it?" Rory asked. The Doctor, instead of answering, put his hand over Rory's mouth, making him stop talking. Amy remained silent next to them.

A new sound was coming. A familiar sound.

The sound of footsteps.

"Run! Inside, now!" The Doctor ran down the valley, leaving Amy and Rory to follow. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and, in mid bound, aimed it at the fence. A portion of the fence, identical to the rest, swung open, and the three ran inside. As soon as they were through, the Doctor shut it again, and it appeared to be a normal fence devoid of a gate again.

"How'd you know the hidden gate was there?" Amy asked the Doctor as they ran for the factory.

The Doctor shrugged. "I didn't. But I had to figure it out sometime, and, well, no time like the present!" He ran up against a wall, shorter in length than the others, slowing down as he found them at a dead end where the wall connected with the fence. "Now, how do we get in here?"

Amy and Rory had caught up, and they were looking around. "There's no door!" Rory said, irritation evident on his face.

"Oh, stop being such a downer! Come on, door, where are you?" The Doctor scanned the building, his eyes darting as fast as they could.

The sound of the footsteps was getting nearer. In the distance, Rory could see a few trees shuddering as the strange being came closer and closer. He turned around again to examine the grey wall, seeing nothing but solid expanse.

To his side Amy wasn't having any luck either. She was digging on the ground, patting it, trying to find something. "Please don't tell me you already lost the ring!"

"No, silly," she said, quickly thrusting her hand up to show the golden metal on her left hand. She brought it down just as quickly, going back to examining the ground. "I'm trying to find a hatch of some sort. If there is one. It seems logical, yeah?"

"Doctor, could there be an underground hatch?" Rory voiced his question to the alien man, who was staring intently at the wall, his forehead half an inch from touching the cold metal.

"I don't think there's a hidden door…I think the door is in plain site," he muttered. Then, taking a paper clip out of his pocket, he began to fiddle with it against the wall.

"Doctor? What are you doing! Something is coming, and you're trying to use a paper clip to sketch a design on a steel wall!" Amy screamed, getting up. She then did what Rory had been wanting to do for the last few minutes: she started pounding on the wall, hitting it with her fists. "Open up, wall, why don't you?"

"Honey, I think the Doctor knows something we don't know…" Rory had barely finished his statement when the wall clicked open. The grey steel making up the side flung outward, with Rory having barely enough time to pull Amy back before they got hit. The Doctor wasn't so lucky; he was thrown back hitting the fence. He sat there rubbing his elbow, of all places.

The footsteps were growing closer. The Time Lord noticed this, and, forgetting his sore elbow, jumped up and ran threw the open wall.

"Doctor?" Amy tried to see inside, but somehow the inner building was pitch black, the sunlight not even penetrating through.

The Doctor's voice came through the darkness. "Pond, and Pond, come on in."

Amy entered immediately. Rory hesitated.

"…are you sure it's safe? It's pretty dark…"

"Roricus, get in here right now!" Rory followed the Doctor's command, stepping into the blackness.

No light; the silence was back. The only sound was the sound of their heavy breathing; the noise the wind had made outside, along with the footsteps, had disappeared as soon as Rory had stepped into the building. He blinked a few times before giving up sight as a lost cause; he walked forward, hoping to find—

"Oh! Did you have to hit me?" Amy's voice rose in the darkness.

"Sorry."

"You can at least sound like you mean it!"

"Ouch, did you have to hit me?"

"Sorry. Sort of hard to see what I'm doing here."

"Oi, you two! Quiet down!" The Doctor's voice came from somewhere to Rory's right—or maybe left, he couldn't tell. "Let's see…this should do the trick!"

A quiet grating sound came at them. Rory instinctively ducked, but he needn't have—it was only the wall closing behind them. The door wall completely closed with a loud thunk resounding throughout the dark room. When that sound died out, silence once again took its place.

"Now, how about some light?" The Doctor must have raised his sonic screwdriver, because a soft whirling sound accompanied a green light that didn't illuminate anything else, not even the Doctor's hand around it. After a bit of whirling in circles, it started to sputter, the sound coming out erratically.

"No, no, no, not good, not good at all!" The thwack came as the light flickered out of existence—the Doctor had hit the device. Another thwack came, accompanied by a steady light once again. The frequency rose in octave as the Doctor searched for something. Rory and Amy stood still, wanting to help but not knowing how.

The next moment, there was light. Rory blinked as his eyes burned from the sudden change. Above them, a light bulb had been switched on. It wasn't enough to give proper lighting, and shadows still filled the room, but sight was now on their side.

The room, lit with the artificial light, was a collection of four steel walls, the light making them appear more of an orangish shade than a grey. The ground was hard and solid, maybe concrete, with no defining features. In fact, the room was empty but for a large steel hinge at the corner of one of the walls—the hinge for the wall door. No doors appeared visible, however; all of the walls were the same size.

Amy stood across from Rory, her hands down at her side as she surveyed the room. The Doctor was rubbing his hand, the sonic sticking out of a pocket. Rory looked at him in concern. "Doctor, are you all right?"

The Doctor looked up, irritation visible on his face. "Am I all right? I just hit a sonic device with my hand, and I had no idea it could hurt this much!"

"Aw, poor baby," said Amy, stopping her inspection to smirk at him. "You hurt your wittle hand." She crossed her arms. "Hey, I thought you said you didn't carry weapons. If you could get upset by a little sonic, well, no wonder the Daleks ran."

"Amy, not the time or the place."

"Spoilsport," Amy pouted.

"Doctor, where are we? And why can't we hear anything outside anymore? And why was it so dark?"

"That-a boy, Rory! Logical questions for once…Amy, maybe you could learn from your husband." Amy stuck out her tongue. "Where we are—in that building, obviously. I'd say the entrance hall, or room, whatever you fancy." The Doctor smiled, looking around, running his fingers through his brown hair. "So, how do we get to the rest of the building, more specifically, the smoke?"

Amy thought. "Another wall door?"

The Doctor nodded. "Could be." He got close to the wall opposite the wall they had entered, putting his head close to it.

Rory looked around nervously. "Uh, Doctor, will it fling out at us again?"

"What?" he said, turning around briefly. "Oh, no. That was just to keep out intruders."

"But aren't we intruders?"

"No! We're more like—visitors."

"Guests. Spectators. Window shoppers." Amy threw out suggestions.

Sighing, Rory put his hands up. "Okay, enough with the synonym game. I get it. So, how will the door open?"

As if to answer him, the Time Lord straightened his bow tie and touched the wall he had been inspecting. With a menacing creak, it opened; instead of flinging out, it retracted out of view, appearing to hide behind the other wall. The next room was, again, dark black.

"There we are. See, slidy door. I like slidy doors. Tons cooler than swingy doors. Don't hurt as much. See, this is the perfect defense system. A door opens to block another door from opening. Ingenious! Just find the right pressure point, as good as a doorknob!" The Doctor stepped through into the darkness for the second time that day. Exchanging a look, Rory and Amy followed behind, hand in hand.

The sonic flickered on and off as the Doctor tried to stabilize its frequency. After a few attempts, he pointed it up at the ceiling—at least, the light appeared to be higher. This room was like the previous room—light wasn't traveling well, and any evidence of light in the other room had vanished. The light bulb above flickered on, revealing a slightly larger room than the one before with a bench along the left wall.

Amy hopped back to the previous room. After a minute there, she came back, frowning. "The light's still on in there, but, from over here, all we see is blackness. Same thing over there. I wonder…start talking," she ordered, leaving the room and returning to the 'entrance hall.' Rory frowned, then started muttering.

"Amy, my dear, beloved wife, wants me to start talking, so I have to talk. For some unknown reason that she doesn't care to share with me. Um, the sky is blue normally, this room is bigger than the last one, the lighting appears to be very old…what else is there to talk about?" Amy came back to the last question.

"I dunno, the meaning of life? By the way, I couldn't hear you in there. At all."

"Well, he was talking up a storm. Not in a good way, either. I could not focus on my sonic whatsoever," the Doctor muttered.

"Why? What's wrong with that mean little sonic of yours?" Amy teased.

"Apparently," the Doctor said, banging the sonic again and, once again, shaking his hand out to distill the pain, "I forgot to recharge it."

Rory looked incredulously at the little device. "You need to charge it? Like a cell phone?"

"Yes, Rory, like a cell phone. But this cell phone is important. And, well, I forgot to replace the batteries…yeah, bad habit, sorry. Anyway, we have a limited amount of power now."

Rory frowned. Amy, however, didn't appear to be unnerved. "So, how much time we got?"

"A few hours of use…however, if I have to keep on turning on lights, it might drain faster. We need to find a switch…" The room suddenly plunged into darkness.

"I think I found the switch?" Rory said as he touched a slight indent on the wall, making the lights turn back on. The Doctor smiled and patted him on the back, making him respond with a worried smile.

Before anything else happened, the sound of footsteps came again.

"Honestly?" shouted Amy. "I didn't hear anything you said, and now we have footsteps? Can we go vandalizing buildings for five minutes without being chased by something or other?"

"So, how can we hear it? If you didn't hear anything over there, how can we here something like footsteps?" the Doctor mused...

"Next room?" Rory said, looking at the Doctor. The Time Lord smiled and straightened his bow tie.

"Next room," he said, putting his hand on the left wall, which slid open. Without waiting, he stepped through, Amy and Rory directly behind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't even own a cell phone. Thus I cannot possibly own Doctor Who. Any reference I make to any other subject is purely for fictional purposes, with no infringement intended.**

**Author's Note: First of all, I understand that the ending of this chapter may get tedious. It will be working up to something, I assure you. The plot is thickening, and I had to get this up sometime. Secondly, thanks to everyone who's subscribed to this story. This is more subscriptions for this story alone than for all of my other stories combined. However, I would appreciate a few more reviews. I give previews to the first reviewer of the chapter and to my favorite review of the chapter. Compliments to my two reviewers for Chapter Three.  
**

**Note: Each chapter will follow one person as the main vantage point. This will be important later on. Chapter Four follows Amy Pond, with a brief plot addition at the end of a certain someone for a brief time. Points to those who can figure it out without even reading the chapter...  
**

* * *

"_Next room?" Rory said, looking at the Doctor. The Time Lord smiled and straightened his bow tie._

_ "Next room," he said, putting his hand on the left wall, which opened up. Without waiting, he stepped through, Amy and Rory directly behind.

* * *

_

"Can you turn the light on all ready? No need to wow us or anything anymore…we got the hint after the last two rooms," Amy said, glaring at where she assumed the Doctor was. Even if he couldn't see her, it felt good to be glaring. Positive reinforcement on her behalf—even if anyone else might not see it like that.

Someone huffed behind her. Probably Rory. She would have to talk to him about not being such a downer. Sure, this was hard and confusing and even a little—just a little—scary, but he would have to hold up.

Amy tried to look around, but, as yet again, the room was pure black, the open doorway not emitting any light. It figured…go somewhere with the Doctor, and you were bound to be in a room that was pitch black. With something chasing you. And you running a lot—Amy could go on and on, much to the Doctor's constant dismay.

"Doctor, this is worse than when I had to keep my eyes shut with those angel things…please turn the lights on soon?"

"What happened?" came Rory's voice from in front of her.

"Rory, time and place, please. Really, Amy, you need to tell your husband more about our travels…keep him up to speed. If not, I don't mind being a marriage counselor…"

"Doctor, just continue patting the wall, okay?" Amy said, sending another glare at the Doctor. Or rather, where his voice was coming from.

"You're glaring at me, aren't you?"

"So what if I am?"

"You know, negative reinforcement will never get us anywhere…"

"Doctor, just find the lights," Rory said, trying to break up a feud that was sure to come.

"Okay, okay. Looking for the lights. Come on, lights, on. On! Wrong wall, I guess…light? Brighten. Allons-y!"

Someone huffed from behind Amy.

"Honestly, no French? I used to love doing a bit of French, very in-style. Can't I have any catchphrases this time around?"

Rory's voice came from ahead of Amy, and she could hear him patting the wall as well. "You already have a bow tie. What more do you need?"

"Ah, good point, mon ami. Or mon Amy, if she'd speak up again. Honestly, though, bow ties are cool."

Amy wasn't listening—something told her their blabbering wasn't the most important thing in the room right now. The most important thing—a sparse detail, something she would have missed the first time around. Something wasn't right here. She just couldn't place her finger on it…

"…well, I checked all of this wall, so nothing here. Doctor, any luck?"

"None as of yet. I really wish I didn't have to ration the sonic…I'm surprised we haven't found a door yet, though…" Both voices came from in front of Amy.

Another huff came from behind.

"Doctor…" she said, standing still, knowing that the door behind her had remained open, "find the light already, okay?"

"Well, you aren't exactly helping, Pond. You might sound like a princess, but that isn't your label as of yet…wait, you sounded scared. Amy Pond, worried. What is it?" She heard him stop looking briefly, probably trying to face where she was standing as still as she could.

"Rory, have you been doing that huffing sound at all?"

"No…a few groans, but that's because I didn't get a proper night's sleep since you and Doc here whisked us off on this adventure." Her husband's voice slowed down, imperceptibly. "Why?"

Amy ignored him. "Doctor, what about you?"

"First of all, Rory, you do not call me Doc. When will you realize I'm not related to those dwarfs…never mind. And, well, I'm perfectly all right with sleep deprivation…"

"No, I meant the huffing," she said, trying to keep herself from pouncing at his voice.

"What? No, no huffing. Do I look like a huffer to you? Huffer…that should be a word. I think it is, in, what, say, 6,000 AD? Yeah, new species meets up with humanity, speaks through throat sounds, very unpleasant in a conversation, but their rap is the best in the universe…"

"Doctor, I haven't been huffing, either."

"Good. I don't need huffers as my companions…." His voice droned out. "Wait. You and Rory haven't been vocalizing complaints, and neither have I. So, who's—"

A loud sound came from behind Amy again, right where they had entered from the previous room.

"Was that a roar?"

Amy ran forward toward the Doctor's voice, hoping she had put a few feet of distance between herself and the thing behind her. She saw the dark outline of her favorite alien moments before she crashed into him. "Habit of stating the obvious, huh?" she said, trying to stay calm and regain her balance.

"A roar, though. Nothing roars. I mean, sure, the commonplace predator does when they get close to the kill, and a friend of mine once had a habit of roaring just to get her way. But something that manages to stay quiet shouldn't roar; it'd be too busy trying to grab us. I think…" the Doctor wasn't able to finish his statement. At that moment something dark, darker than the room they were in, flew past Amy and grabbed him, latching on.

"Doctor!" She called in worry as he went flying past her, being pulled by darkness. Amy tried to grab him, but he was past the doorway and out of the room before she could react.

A call to her left made her forget about the Doctor.

"Amy!"

"Rory! No, no, no, you are not being taken too. Where'd you go? Rory?" She cried out, but it was too late. Both the Doctor and Rory were gone, and the black room was silent once again.

"Where is that light switch? Come on, where is it! Okay, first sign of madness, talking to yourself. And inanimate objects. Oh, well…lights, turn on this instant!" Amy found the closest wall and began to frantically hit it, trying to find the pressure point the Doctor had spoken of. However, nothing lit up; Amy remained in the dark and the silence. She couldn't even figure out which direction the Doctor and her husband had been taken; for all she knew, whatever had been behind her had opened up another wall-door without her knowledge.

Sighing, Amy, leaned against the wall closest to her. The cold metal felt good against her shaking body...

Suddenly, the room was flooded with light. Amy squinted, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to the change in the atmosphere.

"Hmm, that pressure point light switch thingy must have been lagging or something…what a time for the Doctor not to use his sonic! He uses it everywhere else; but no, not in the building made entirely of metal and perfect for sonification. Stupid Time Lord!" She slid down the wall, landing in a sitting position, and covered her head with her arms. "Now what?"

"What else? You're gonna do what you do best: you're gonna save the Doctor."

Amy looked up. "Who's there?" she asked, squinting around the now-lit room. It was empty; it looked the same as every other room they had masqueraded through before. But, still, someone had spoken just then, a woman's voice, English, definitely the accent. So where was the body to go with the voice? "Definitely going mad, Amy Pond…"

She sighed again. That voice may have been feminine, and too young for her to really trust, but, well, it was right. Most of the adventure came from her saving the Doctor, the Doctor saving her, or each of them saving the other. This would just have to be a her-save-him situation. With two him's for once. The Doctor and Rory were someplace, and, even if they were all right, they were definitely going to be worried for her. She would have to prove to them, once again, that she could take care of herself without their help. People might not always believe her, but that was their loss.

Getting up, Amy looked around more closely. If the rest of the building was like these first few rooms had been, she'd need to find her way around without the help of defining landmarks or a GPS. The story of Hansel and Gretel came to mind; wait, they lost their path. Might as well not take a leaf out of their book…might lead to trouble later. She would want to find her way back, not get lost.

"So, no bread crumbs. I can manage that…" Amy looked around. Maybe she could take a piece of string, like in that Greek tale…Amy looked down at her outfit. There was no way she would tear up that shirt, and the denim jacket was too thick to make good string material. Groaning, she took off her bandana. It would just have to take one for the team…

"Sorry, bandana. I'm going to miss you…or not…" Amy the piece of cloth back on. Maybe there was a better way she could mark how to get back without destroying her precious accessories.

Moving her hand through her front pocket, she felt around for what she was pretty sure she had. She smiled when her fingers touched the slight cylindrical tube. Knowing what it was already, she pulled out the lip gloss. Nothing fancy—just something she had to make sure she had when she was living the life of a kissogram. She doubted she'd need it anytime soon; if she did, she'd make the Doctor buy one for her. Or her husband. She thought for a moment on which it'd be more fun to boss about…then shook herself. She had to be serious if she was going to find out anything at all.

Gritting her teeth, she left the room through the previous door. The wall was still open, leading back from the path they had taken to get there. Good. That might help. However, it could close. She needed to use this as a back-up plan. Opening the lip gloss, she put a small amount of the red water-proof compound on her lips, then bent down, drawing an arrow in the center of the floor pointing toward the door leading to the entrance to the compound. The orange light and shadows made the red arrow almost invisible, but now she had a way to track her path without anything else noticing it.

But what if the Doctor got away with Rory? How would they find her? She puckered her mouth before shrugging. They'd have to make do while she tried to find them and figure out what was going on.

Thinking, she looked down. Besides the newly drawn red arrow, the ground was free from any defining features. Amy rushed back through the way they had come, stopping briefly to point arrows toward the main wall/door. When she reached the dead end, she drew a big 'X' on the wall across from the remaining open door. If her memory held, that was where they had entered the building. Now she had a starting point.

Now for finding her two men. Going back through each room, she looked around. There wasn't any defining features in any of the rooms—besides her arrows marking the path, she could have been entering the same room again and again. No other doors were open to show the way the—thing—had gone that had taken the Doctor and her husband. But it had to have opened a door. How else would it have gotten them through and out of sight so fast?

Amy must have spent fifteen minutes, moving through each of the rooms her group had gone through, trying to find a clue to the dark being's direction. However, her efforts were in vain. There was no sign of the direction they had gone. She sighed in frustration in the third room from the entrance, kicking the wall. Creaking, it slid back, revealing another dark room.

"Okay, Amy," she said, looking nervously through the blackness that replaced the wall. "No other headway. Might as well just get it over with and start looking…" Without further hesitation, she went through the wall, once again into the darkness.

* * *

In another part of the complex, another woman was walking through a wallway. A determined smile set her face, and her blond hair flew in a wind that covered the room behind her. "Of course this would happen," she said to herself, her accent echoing in the silence. Her voice was winded from excursion, but she sounded almost content. "Sometimes I wonder if the Doctor is the one who finds the danger or if the danger happens because of the Doctor."

She looked around the darkness surrounding her, taking out a small cylindrical device. With a buzzing sound, the lights flickered on, showing the orange-grey walls. She looked around. First thing first: find Amy. Then the Doctor and that other man, Rory, he was called. She almost laughed as she approached a wall to her left, starting to pat it as she searched for the pressure point.

Just like old times.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Do I have to keep on saying this? Please don't sue me. As this category was under FFN, it makes sense to assume that we can hold a small dominion over it since we know we don't own it. Just be glad that BBC has all these fans...**

**Author's Note: Sorry, finally got past that error in uploading. This isn't as long as I planned, but I want to get back to Amy, since I didn't want Rory and the Doc to have too much going on besides normal run-for-your-life. I don't think my writing is too great in this one...too much convo, too much action, not enough of a mix...but it's been a while since i uploaded, and I didn't want to wait. Hope you enjoy! And thanks to all my subscribers...I'm completely amazed.**

**Note: Same as last four chapters. Each chapter follows a single character, blah blah, blah, this chapter follows Rory Williams-Pond as he and the Doctor...just read on before I give anything away.  
**

_

* * *

"Rory! No, no, no, you are not being taken too. Where'd you go? Rory?" She cried out, but it was too late. Both the Doctor and Rory were gone, and the black room was silent once again.

* * *

_

"I had been looking for a light switch. A stupid little light switch. Innocent enough, I think, a simple little activity. But no. Something had to come and attack us in the dark," Rory said, throwing his hands in the air. Beside him, the Doctor groaned.

"Rory, can you please be quiet?" He asked. Rory decided to ignore him again. It helped his mood a small bit.

"Everywhere we go with you, Doctor, we get attacked. We can't just have a peaceful day. For once, can we go somewhere where one of us is not kidnapped?" He leaned his head against the wall.

"Rory, quiet already," the man/alien just accused said, glaring at the human.

Rory looked around angrily. "You have no idea what to do now, do you? We're trapped here, in the dark, Amy is somewhere without us to help…we don't even know what grabbed us or where we are! Ugh!"

"First of all, Amy never needs our help anyway. Second of all, Rory Williams Pond, shut your mouth!" the Doctor screamed.

The silence that came was a little trying. The room they had been thrown in, by the dark tentacle thing, was large and cavernous—it would take forever to find a wall that opened. They had already ran around several times, to no avail. A small orange light was on in the center of the rectangular room, casting a small amount of light on each other. However, besides the size, this room was almost identical to every other room we had been in in this facility.

The main difference was the center of the room. Underneath the light, upright on the floor, was a small table, almost like a pedestal. It was a different material than the walls were, a solid marble stone with black wisps of color breaking the smooth white. Both the Doctor and Rory had been staring at it, watching the black appear to move under the light flickering overhead, almost as if different shapes were coming and dissipating.

"Doctor…?" Rory said hesitantly, looking at the alien man. He was bent over, hands together. Upon hearing Rory, the Doctor looked up.

"Yes, I have no idea where we are. I have no idea what just took us. None. What do you think it was?" The last sentence was quiet, curious.

Rory looked around and shrugged. "How would I know? Um…something black? With tentacles?"

"Tentacles? Why do you say tentacles?"

Rory shrugged. "I don't have any other word to describe them. I suppose they felt more ropey, but…I wasn't really in the mood to feel around the creepy dark thing that had grabbed me, if you know what I mean," he said.

The Time Lord looked around, frowning. "Tentacles. Rope dark as…well, darker than the dark. Maybe…"

"Doctor?" Rory asked, squinting in the darkness. "Do you know what that thing was?"

"Not a clue. I was hoping you'd have felt something different, but we got the same analysis," the Doctor said, going back to staring at the rock in the center.

Rory, however, stood up. Turning around, he started tapping the wall he had just leaned on. "How did we get in here?"

"I dunno," the Doctor moaned. "Um, through a wall."

"But none of the doors—er, walls—shut. So none of them opened. Did we just fly through a wall?"

"It's not entirely impossible, I suppose. Messes with the law of matter, but if we were going fast enough, per say, or if that thing had a teleport connection or wire…" The Doctor looked up. "We might be able to find a telepathic signal. We might be able to find a way out of here!"

He jumped up and started running around the room. "Doctor, what are you doing? And isn't telepathy reading people's minds?" Rory stared, confused.

"Right you are, Willi-Pond! Teleports mess with normal signals, like radio interference. And I'm running because I need to find a place to start…and…I think I'll choose…here!" He stopped next to the wall opposite Rory. Turning around, he started patting the wall vigorously.

"Um…we already tried. That wall doesn't have anything," Rory said, confusion etched across his face.

"Wrong, Roricus. We had been trying to find a door, and we had gone pretty fast. I'm not looking for a door. I'm looking for an opening," the Doctor said, grinning slightly. This was his element, figuring things out, and it made Rory feel relieved to see him at work. Something was getting accomplished. Maybe not what he wanted, but something was happening, and that was preferable to just sitting there, staring at a pedestal.

However, relief soon gave way to confusion. "Wait. What's the difference?"

"Hmm?"

"What's the difference between a door and an opening?"

The Doctor looked up, still feeling the wall. "Easy. A door is something that can close. An opening can't close. It remains open, otherwise it's a door."

"…that doesn't make any actual sense…" Rory looked around. This was getting no where.

"Makes perfect sense. You just need to think logically. Now, I know that isn't your strong point, Williams, but just try," the Doctor said, moving on to the next wall, to Rory's right. "The door will open, but the opening is always open. Therefore, we didn't go through a wall, we went through an opening in the wall."

Rory walked over to where the Doctor was searching. "But…wouldn't we have seen it by now if there was a gap in one of these walls?"

"You'd think so. But it'd be disguised, and small, and easy to miss…here, come on, you want to find your wife, don't you? Just, start patting the walls again. If you pat and you don't feel anything, you've found it."

Rory looked at the Time Lord. Despite knowing that nothing the Doctor did would ever make sense, Amy trusted the Doctor. Might as well he trust this alien too. Rory walked to the opposite wall and started patting it. Everything felt the same as before, and he definitely felt the wall, cold and hard in the subtle lighting.

"Doctor, this isn't working," he called. Of course it wouldn't work. They would have noticed a hole in the wall…sort of hard not to notice if there was a hole in the wall, Rory thought. Despite the flickering light and orange-grey walls, the room wasn't exactly cluttered.

Turning around, Rory looked at the Doctor. And was surprised to see a wide grin on the Time Lord's face. "Please don't tell me…"

"Found it! Right here!" the Doctor said, staring up and down at what appeared to be a small section of the wall. He ran his hand through his light brown bangs, smiling widely.

Rory started at him, mouth agape. "You're kidding, right? Come on—there's nothing there!"

"Exactly. Now stop acting like a stupid human and come over here, will you?" Sighing, Rory stumbled over to the Doctor, making a point to walk around the stone in the center of the room. It was—unnerving, to say the least.

"So." Rory looked at the wall in front of the Doctor. "It's a wall."

"Yep!" said the Doctor proudly, as if he had just built the grey expanse himself.

"Okay, Doctor, girls may love your calm-and-cool attitude, but if Amy were here, she'd have slapped you by now. And, since she isn't here and I am…"

The Doctor looked at the human, clearly amused. "First of all, Amy wouldn't have slapped me. She'd have kicked me. Second of all, what are you going to do? Rory, you don't know how to slap."

Before Rory could get a word in for that rebuff, the Doctor continued. "Now, this here is a wall. But it isn't. See? Look here," he pointed to the left. "Feel this. Hard, solid wall, right? This, too," he now pointed to the right. Rory felt them, feeling as if he was in grade school and being asked to identify which was a circle versus which was a square.

"But this…feel it," the Doctor said, pointing at the wall in straight in front of him. Looking at the Doctor in speculation, Rory did as he asked.

That wasn't a wall. His hand went through. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that a two foot gap was just sitting there, almost blending in with the wall. A small path led out, immediately overrun by a sharp curve right. In appearance, a well hidden opening in the wall.

"But…how did we miss this?" Rory asked, looking confusedly at the Doctor. The Doctor winked knowingly.

"Easy. Perception filter. You mentioned telepathy—this used the basic definition to make us just skip over this patch and not notice it. If we'd have been looking, it'd be easy to find, but, as it were, we were rushing," the Doctor said, nodding. "Clever trick. I hope there's not more of these around…it could get confusing, and I'd rather not get lost."

"Uh, Doctor, it's already confusing, and we're already lost." Rory couldn't help himself; he ignored the Doctor's reproaching glare. "So…we leave, then?"

"Yep. Leave, find Amy, you know, the usual," he said, and walked through the slight opening in the wall. Rory sighed, looked around a few times, and followed.

They were now in a small room, identical to the previous rooms they had been in before being trapped in that last room with the stone. "He needs a new decorator…" Rory mumbled. "Wait, the light's already on. That's different, yeah? A relief…"

Sure enough, a new light bulb was on, giving the room a nice quality. Unlike Rory, however, the Doctor frowned. "This is a trap…"

Groaning, Rory turned to face the Doctor. "Everything's a trap. Come on, we just escaped. Why would this be a trap?" He went and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. The orange light cast a rusty glow on him; however, the light was also warming.

The Doctor started pacing, his hands behind his back. "That was too easy. You have prisoners, you don't let them escape like that. Plus this light was already on. This is all one big, giant trap."

"You know, big and giant mean the same thing…"

The Doctor stopped pacing, putting his hand over Rory's mouth. In turn, the human stopped talking. He had enough experience with talking when the Doctor wanted him to be quiet. Silently, barely moving their feet off of the ground, the two men treaded over to the opposite wall, listening.

In the midst of the silence that seemed to hang over this maze-like compound could be heard the sound of footsteps. Running feet.

Over that sound came a loud roar. Almost as if a tornado had broken loose and was tearing the building up.

"You know what, Rory? I'm really getting annoyed with that sound of footsteps. And that roar. Can't this get more, I don't know, original? Get some songbirds in here, it would help out immensely!" the Doctor muttered, smiling, even though his eyes didn't show the same emotion.

"Okay, okay, do we have to…" Rory started saying, before the Doctor grabbed his arm, tapped a wall, and pulled him through a newly opening door. "Why do we always have to run for our lives?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I was giddy when I watched the newest episodes of Doctor Who. Despite the fact that if I had written them, I would probably be just as giddy...I have nothing to do with owning any part or process of Doctor Who.**

**Quick Note: You all hate me, right? Sorry for the length between updates! So much has happened...both in the Whoniverse and in our own. I was procrastinating, I guess...I didn't want to ruin this chapter...you'll see why at the end. From here on out, I can start having fun with this!**

**Note: Each chapter follows a different character, switching between them. Since we're now halfway through Season 6, I'll repeat that this story takes place _before_ Season 6, around the time of the honeymoon, more or less. Therefore, I'll try to retain any spoilers and keep this story as original as I can. Thanks for your patience!**

* * *

_"Okay, Amy," she said, looking nervously through the blackness that replaced the wall. "No other headway. Might as well just get it over with and start looking…" Without further hesitation, she went through the wall, once again into the darkness._

* * *

The outpost was a maze, that much was certainly a fact. How it all fitted in that building was a mystery on top of the other mysteries…but general physics wasn't occupying Amy's mind as she felt along a wall for the door. After all, the Tardis proved that physics didn't know a thing in some circumstances.

This was the tenth room since the Doctor and Rory had been taken. Ten more rooms, one wall an indent with a light switch, another small uprising opening the door. There didn't seem to be a pattern as to which wall the door was on—twice she had found the door before the switch, and she had to improvise in marking the way without the dim lamps to guide her lipstick. However, after ten rooms, a lipstick path marking her way, and various turns, Amy frowned at the ground.

A scuff mark—black and faded—became visible as the light flickered on above her.

Amy's mind churned as she squinted at the mark on the reddish ground. That would mean that someone…something…had been there before. She couldn't tell how long ago, or what was there…but that meant she was on a path of some sort, that this maze wasn't completely impossible to navigate.

The redhead bent down to examine the mark. The closer inspection didn't change her earlier analysis…a black mark, less than a foot long, tapering out at the end facing her door. She couldn't tell if it was from a shoe or something else. The smudge could have come from Rory's shoe, or a wheelbarrow, for all the details it gave. It was just there, the first imperfection in a building of symmetry and silence.

Still, it was there. And that meant that she wasn't the first person…thing…to go this way before. Maybe she'd find another blot if she continued…

However, she knew that that wouldn't happen. Nothing happened easily, least of all when she was trying to help the Doctor. From the Angels making her travel with her eyes tightly shut, to her getting locked in the Tardis, to having to remember everything even as the Crack took it all away…it took time and hard work to get past each new obstacle. Easy just wasn't in the job description.

If only it was…

"Okay, Amy," Mrs. Pond said, bringing herself up again, her eyes still on the scuff mark, "get going. Staring at black spotches all day will get you nowhere, and…and you've got to find the Doctor and Rory…" She took a deep breath and started pressing on a wall. She had to find a door, had to find them and get out of here…

There. A small outdent, as she had come to think of the bump in the wall, off of the wall opposite where she had last been. She pressed and waited for a few seconds.

Sure enough, the wall opened, the room she was in now surrounded on two sides by impenetrable darkness. Amy put a foot through the door for a second before pulling back, her back itching. Something wasn't right. Something was in that other room, she could tell—just like how one knows they're being watched, that back-of-the-neck feeling.

Something was through that doorway.

Amy took a deep breath. She'd have to go through someday. This was how she was going to find the Doctor—and her husband. She'd go through and make whatever was in that other room answer to her. Sure, she couldn't do much more than kick it…well, her purse might pack a bit of a punch. But she didn't like her odds against something using pure force.

Taking a final resolving sigh, she groaned and walked through the blinding darkness into the next room.

Listening, Amy slowly made her way to a wall, automatically feeling for a switch. Room Eleven, and she might be finding something. She didn't hear anything besides her own breath getting close to hyperventilation, but she felt it, in the shivers in her arms, like a cold breath on her neck. She wasn't alone here. Not nearly. "Come on, light…where are you?" she muttered as she moved onward to a different wall. Nothing on that. And still no sound but her own frantic pounding. She knew what it was like to be stuck in darkness—and she had the sick feeling that something was in there with her, that she was going to brush up on it…

Amy swallowed, forcing herself to continue.

The last wall. It had to have a door on it somewhere. How had she passed up something? She pressed on it, the feeling that something was watching her remaining. Nothing was on the cool wall…wait. A little imperfection in the wall, feeling like it was glaring at her. She pushed on it, letting the light flicker on. The sudden brightness made her blink for a few moments; she then looked around the room in disbelief.

Nothing. There was nothing there…

Amy frowned. Maybe there was. She knelt down again, over the clean floor. Clean but for two black marks, as if two pens had spilled at the exact same spot. Someone…something…had been there, just like it had in the previous room.

A squeak from behind made her turn suddenly. The door was closing, the door she had used to get in. From the black of the wallway came the reddish grey of the actual wall coming into view again. Amy ran forward, hitting the wall just as it closed onto the perpendicular wall with a small banging. "Oh, come on! Honestly? It closes right when I'm getting a lead? Why does this always happen?" She started tapping it like she had the previous rooms and walls, trying to feel out a doorway.

There was none.

She must have missed a door, must have missed something…she couldn't be trapped…

No. She had a husband waiting for her—well, hopefully, he was trying to find her as much as she was to him. She had the Doctor to rely on—he never failed. Almost never. He might not come at the right time…for a Time Lord, wearing a watch was alien to him…but he always came when it mattered. Rory and the Doctor both.

A sound startled her out of her reminiscing. Footsteps…Amy tried to ignore them, her breath catching in her throat. It was nothing, just a figment of the imagination…but it couldn't be…

The footsteps were right outside the wall in front of her now. "Are you trying to scare me?" she called out, too numb to be properly frightened. "It's working…no need to check up on me. Go and terrorize some other guy, please," she said, sarcastically.

With a creak from behind her, the wall to her right slid open. She jumped, turning in a heartbeat. "You want me to go there? No way, if you're waiting…"

Her voice was cut off as a cacophony of sounds came out her, not unlike what had happened outside in the wood; but this was harsher, more angry than sad. Wind accompanied it; a blast came at her from the open wallway, throwing her hair behind her shoulder instantly. Both were gone as soon as they came, and the footsteps were growing distant now. Hesitantly, Amy stepped through the open wallway…it was gone now, right?

A light was already on in the new room. As was a line of red on the ground below, and a door open straight ahead…

"You've got to be kidding me!" Amy exclaimed, staring at the red arrow on the gorund. "I've just gone from dark to darker to who knows what comes next, and I've gone in a circle?" she moaned, at a loss for anything else. She wanted to kick something, to scream, to grab someone—namely the Doctor, for taking them there in the first place—and smack them on the head a good few times. However, all she did was gape for several moments.

"Open Space." Amy looked up. A voice had come, from her right. She was leaning against the left wall; and, with two walls open already, the wall to the right was just that, a wall.

Still, a voice had come. The same voice that had told her to find her friends—young, feminine, almost certainly working class London. "What?"

"You asked what came next. Open space. Nothing's darker…or more beautiful," the voice came again. It was slightly muffled, as if from the other side of the right wall. Amy stood up straight, letting her purse hang limply at her side.

"Who's there?" she asked, bringing her purse up to dig through. Nothing useful…a couple of combs, makeup, a pen, her cell phone—nothing that could be considered as a weapon. And she wasn't supposed to use weapons. Still, she couldn't help but admire others, namely River, so sure of themselves with something useful in their hands…

Before a weapon was found, however, the voice came again. "Oh, I'm nobody. Not in this world, anyway. Nor in your world. Not anymore."

Amy stomped her foot—she knew it was childish, but she was exhausted from the worry of the darkness and quiet, and she didn't have anything better to do. Giving up her manhunt for a lethal comb or the like, she exploded, glaring at the right wall as if it were to blame. "Are you going to answer me in more than just riddles? Or can I go back to getting lost?"

Laughter, soft and lilting, came from behind the wall. "I know who you are. Amy Pond. Wife to Rory Pond, or Williams. Traveling with a man—an alien, a Time Lord—known as the Doctor."

"How do you know that?"

"Easy. You talk very loudly. And I've heard it all before anyway." A grating sound came, like a hinge being opened after a year of rusting; the wall was opening. Amy stepped back, squinting into the wallway.

However, she wasn't expected for what came through the blackness. A monster would have made sense. Some sort of strange alien. With an English accent, but she'd seen and heard weirder. Amy would even have been prepared for nothing to come through. Just a disembodied voice. After all, the sound here was strange. But that's not what came through the blackness.

Instead a woman came through. Blond, young, wearing a denim jacket open with a pink top underneath. Completely human looking. Not that aliens didn't look like humans—the Doctor was living proof—but, still, this was too…normal.

"Who are you?" Amy asked as soon as the initial shock passed.

The woman smiled, her mouth opening widely. "Rose Tyler."


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I would never have been that original with River Song. And I cried when I rewatched Silence in the Library...if I owned Doctor Who, I wouldn't be so crazed about it, would I?**

**Quick Note: Sorry, but I have been sick, and this has been put off until I could get well enough to think again. Which was today. I can't promise what the next chapter will be, since I need to figure out how long the story will be before I write any more, but it's finally coming together. Took me long enough, I know...**

**Note: Each chapter follows a different character. This one follows Rory Pond as he and the Doctor...well, as they continue running.**

* * *

_In the midst of the silence that seemed to hang over this maze-like compound could be heard the sound of footsteps. Running feet._

_ Over that sound came a loud roar. Almost as if a tornado had broken loose and was tearing the building up._

_ "Okay, okay, do we have to…" Rory started saying, before the Doctor grabbed his arm, tapped a wall, and pulled him through a newly opening door. "Why do we always have to run for our lives?"_

* * *

"Because what's the fun of instant teleportation and time travel if you don't get a work out?" the Doctor called back, looking excited. Rory followed, for once not caring that the Time Lord was leading them apparently randomly, or that in each new room the light was already on, its reddish hue glaring down at them as the Doctor either patted the wall quickly or sonic-ed it to open.

They were running, and when you ran beside the Doctor, most other thoughts tend to disappear in the hurry.

Through a wallway, open a wallway, through a wallway, open a wallway, through a wallway…again and again. Rory lost count after so long; he wanted to argue, say that they were going the wrong way, remind the Doctor that they were just getting more and more lost, that he had a wife somewhere in here—but words left him as soon as they formed, lost in the wind that seemed to be on their heels, that had come from nowhere and would fade into nothing.

Just as a coherent thought formed in his mind, the Doctor stopped in the middle of a room. He spun around a few times, running his fingers through his hair. "Something's changed," he said, almost offhandedly. "What's changed? Rory?"

The companion blinked, looking over his shoulder. "Um…this room feels darker than the last few rooms?"

"No, no, that's a feeling. I want a fact. Sure, this room does feel darker, but it isn't…something else has changed to make us feel like that. What's changed?" The Doctor stared through the dark wallway behind them, as if trying to look through it.

Rory shrugged. "Um…well, it feels cooler."

"I said no feelings!"

"Right, right, facts. Er…maybe the pressure is less in this room than the last?"

"Worthless, you, being all touchy-feely and sciency…wait." The Doctor turned to face Rory. "Why do you say the pressure is different?"

He shrugged again. "I dunno; the room itself feels different—I know, no feelings, but still. I think…maybe…this room isn't smaller than the others, or larger, but it's colder, so unless the air conditioning has been turned up, it makes sense that the pressure is lower. Somehow?"

The Doctor lifted a finger, as if to test the wind, which was lightly blowing still. "Not pressure. Well, yes, pressure, but not really. Not our room's pressure, it hasn't changed; no, that room's." He pointed up. "See? Small holes…just barely. Relieving the pressure building up in whatever's up there."

Rory squinted, trying to avoid looking at the dim light. "There's a room above us as well? This place is multi-leveled?"

"It appears so…something up there is creating one heck of an air-displacement…there wasn't any wind in the other rooms."

"So…we're under a generator or something?"

The Doctor turned around, a mischievous glint in his eye. "Or it could be a giant, and we're feeling its exhales."

"Oh, thanks for that. Exactly what I needed to think of…giants in a place creepy enough," Rory said. The Doctor grinned slightly at the sarcasm.

"Don't be prejudiced…I've met nice giants before. Well…but that's beside the point. Maybe you're right; maybe it is a generator, a machine, up there. Or it could be the nesting area of our tentacled friend."

"Whatever it is, we're not being chased anymore."

The Time Lord nodded. "It never gets too close, those footsteps. No…that's not it. It got close once; otherwise, it just chases us into corners, egging us on."

Frowning, Rory looked at the black wallway, open behind them. "What…do you think there's two different sets of things following us?"

"Maybe," the Doctor muttered. He clapped his hands together; Rory flinched at the sudden noise. "Whatever it is, at least one thing here is playing us like lab rats in a maze. Scaring us to get us moving, putting us at different sections, and watching us struggle to find the prize."

"Prize?"

"Finding each other again, I'd assume."

"Hold on. Are you saying that it's…studying us?"

"Not for academic reasons; 'know one's enemy,' I'd say would be the phrase it'd use."

Rory frowned deeper. He motioned around him. "So…it, whatever 'it' may be, could kill us whenever it so desires?"

"Maybe." The Doctor has lost his grin; Rory had noticed a while ago that the Doctor was like whiplash, smiling one moment and glaring the next. "Maybe not. But no use standing around here! Come on! We're not going to be the rats."

"So…what are we going to do?"

"Find another way!"

"What…through ventilation shafts? Which are nonexistent here, by the way."

The Doctor looked at him, amused. "Not another way through. Another way to find Amy without getting even more lost."

"I thought you knew where you were going!" Rory exclaimed.

"Well, I can't do everything at once," the Doctor said, his voice going higher in pitch to almost a whine. "I got us away, didn't I?"

"But…" Rory shrugged, helplessly. "How can Amy stand you?"

"She doesn't. She's getting better at slapping, that's all. And don't you dare start on that too!"

Smiling, the Doctor turned around in a circle. "Hmmm…doors…walls…ways…there's something here, I know it!"  
"What?"

"Oh, I don't know…wait, maybe I do. We could…but that's crazy."

"What is?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair once again. "We go back the way we came."

Rory looked around; when no subservient thought entered his mind, he sighed. "Doctor, I don't see how that's crazy. It seems plenty logical to me."

"We'd be going back the way we came in…the way those footsteps were. See, we know there's a trap ahead; that's why we're being herded this way. But…but. Anything could be behind us, and…"

Rory squinted in the dim light. "Are you getting somewhere with this?" he interrupted.

The Doctor paused, his finger raised as if to help him declare something. Slowly, he put it down. "Okay, we'll head back! Happy?" he said crossly. A smile lit Rory's face briefly before both men turned around to face the dark wallway. "I guess I can't say ladies first, can I?"

"Sorry, but no." With that, Rory stepped through the door.

* * *

"Something's changed." A few rooms later, the Doctor's voice was the first to break the silence.

"What has?" Rory asked, frowning in the darkness. The way back was familiar, but not…the way walking up a full road is different than walking down an empty one.

"I'm not sure."

Rory rolled his eyes. "Stop doing that!"

"Doing what?" the Doctor asked, indignant.

"Saying something mysterious and then refusing to explain!"

"Oh. That. Sorry…it just sort of comes out…like a scream on a roller coaster. You just can't help it."

Rory sighed. He turned to the Doctor; where his voice was, at least. "Do you have any ideas, then?"

"Yes. No. Maybe." With that enigmatic statement, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver. He must have pressed a button; his hand became visible for a moment, the green light of the sonic outlining it as it emitted a high-pitched whining. Then, without a flicker, the room lit up as the light proceeded to turn on.

The room _was _different, was changed.

The light, above, wasn't old and dim. It was bright, a strong, new light in the rustic warehouse. It almost gave a bluish shine to the walls, as opposed to the red shine in previous rooms—in all other rooms until this one.

"New light…that's different…" the Doctor said, the sonic buzzing dying down. "So, why is there a new light?"

"Someone finally got enough money to pay for lightbulbs?" Rory asked, half-joking, half-hoping his answer was really that simple, and knowing it wouldn't be.

"Rory, in wartime Germany, when the German mark became basically worthless, people couldn't afford lightbulbs. So, instead, they'd go to their workplaces, and trade in a lightbulb there for a burned-out one. The work would go buy a new bulb, and the person would have effectively gotten a source of lighting."

The brunette waited a moment before responding. "Yeah, but…what does that have to do with this…?"

"I'm not sure. But it was a good story. Trade-offs…that's what's happening here, the wallways opening, the burnt-out lights…they're trade-offs. And…and…" The Doctor looked around for a moment. "We saw this place issuing out smoke…it's obviously some sort of furnace someplace…and the lights…the lights aren't just here for decoration. They're some sort of power-fueler."

"This thing," Rory started, when the Doctor paused for a breath, "it relies on senses, yes? That sound, those footsteps…the lights above…Doctor, are we still mice in a trap?"

"Yes, but we're mice that know that the easiest way through is by looking above," the alien stated. He started jumping. "Yep, above. Nothing good's below…I don't think so, at least…"

He raised the sonic screwdriver yet again, and buzzed it at the ceiling. The light flickered slightly, but then grew stronger and stronger, until it was almost blinding. And then…darkness.

But it wasn't the same darkness as had been in the room previously. There was light—above them, in the ceiling. No, above the ceiling.

"Hold on…so there _is _a room up there?" Rory asked, squinting. The ceiling had evaporated into a glass-like material; above, Rory could see a new set of lights and a white ceiling.

The Doctor grinned. "Yes, there is. Now, how about giving me a boost?" he asked, pointing at a hatch in the ceiling to the right…a hatch that hadn't been present in the actual lit room.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I'm way too excited about the fiftieth anniversary special to actually own the show. If I did own the show, why would I be putting up with fanfiction when I could make my stories a reality?**

**Quick Note: I know, I know, I'm horrible. I needed that break. I've sat on this chapter for ages, I've opened the document, typed a few words, hated them, and given up again. But high school ended for me today, and...sudden inspiration? We'll call it that. Anyway, I think this is kind of worth the wait...**

**Note: Each chapter is told from a different character. This one, finally, is told by Rose Tyler!**

* * *

"_Who are you?" Amy asked as soon as the initial shock passed._

_ The woman smiled, her mouth opening widely. "Rose Tyler."_

* * *

She was lost. Simple as that.

Well, she had a clue. Something had happened. And, more likely than anything-more likely that a Dalek was likely to recite the word "Exterminate"-that something was alien.

And, as much as Rose Tyler wanted to pull at her hair, or scream at the walls, or punch the ground, she didn't. Instead, she smiled.

Punching the ground would hurt more than help, anyway.

Standing here, in front of Amelia Pond, she still wasn't sure what had brought her here. She had been at 'work,' as she liked to call it. Her mother might complain that outings through London were more fun than work, but she would just nod and shrug. If her work, searching for alien involvement throughout the city, was fun, well, why shouldn't it be?

But, suddenly, she wasn't on a crowded London street anymore. Instead, she was in a forest. A surprisingly quiet forest.

Alone.

No. Not alone. There was a sound...a sound she recognized...but...it was impossible...

And, without getting her bearings, without checking her cell phone-which didn't work, she would later discover to her annoyance-she started running to that sound that was all too familiar.

When she had arrived at the blue box, she had hid. Because three strangers had left it. And none were the least bit familiar.

He had to have regenerated. Of course.

Rose examined the new occupants of the Tardis. A redhead, young, slightly too...feminine...for her to feel completely comfortable. A man, a tad nervous-looking. And another man, wearing a tattered coat and-of all things-a bow tie.

From her hiding spot among some ferns, she smiled. Maybe...just maybe...

A crunch from the other side of them made her duck down. Something else was here. Something else was hiding. And she didn't trust that other something.

So, when the noise started, the screeching monstrosity that ended as abruptly as it had, Rose didn't move. She remained still as the three strangers started to walk away toward the smoke in the distance.

When they were well clear of the area, she got up, looked around the thicket for any sign of life, and, upon finding none, approached the blue box.

"Hey," she said, quietly, smiling a little. "You look different...what's he done to you?" This wasn't the Tardis she remembered. Or maybe it was, but it seemed strange...a different shade of blue, perhaps, or a newer furnish instead of wizened wood...

But what other blue police box randomly appeared in a forest on an alien world?

She had the key. She always had it...it was the one thing she refused to take off, the one thing that remained. She could look inside, just for a second...

But. But, but but.

Those three were getting further and further away. And one of them would be the Doctor. Probably the one with the bow tie. He probably was under the impression that they were cool, and his two friends hadn't the heart to inform him otherwise.

"Later," Rose whispered to the Tardis, running her arm down its door before turning away from it and starting through the forest, toward the smoke.

* * *

She saw them enter.

She heard the thing, coming closer.

She saw the door close.

And, when the woods grew quiet again, when the monster disappeared, she ducked toward the door, patted around, and jumped back when it opened.

She was inside.

* * *

"And this is how to get hopelessly lost," Rose said to herself, groaning, as another wall opened to another dark patch of room. "Come on. This is pointless."

She walked forward, patted around for the light, blinked when it came on. Great. This looked the same as the last room, and the one before that, and the one before that, and...well, she had lost count. The Doctor and his new companions had disappeared somehow.

Well, now she knew how the Doctor always felt, having to chase her through uncharted territory. Maybe she should have waited at the Tardis, get reacquainted with it, and then, when this Doctor and his friends had solved this place, she would have greeted him. She smirked just thinking about his surprise.

She wanted to cry when she thought about that same surprise.

No. He was still the Doctor. He would remember her.

So why had she hesitated? Why had she hid when the three had appeared in her line of sight? Why hadn't she just come straight out and waved and explained her own confusing situation with them?

Rose knew the answer. She hadn't because she was afraid that it wasn't the same. Even if this was her own original world, something she was starting to doubt-her world wasn't this annoyingly maze-like, was it?-this wasn't the same time stream.

And if it was her original world, then, something had gone wrong. Because she wasn't supposed to be able to get back.

It had been years. There was a certain difference in life in Pete's World, not just the money or the knowledge that it was different than the place she had grown up in. But she liked it there, had come to accept it. In life, that was the best one could do: accept what fate gave you, if you believed in fate, and, if not, accept life itself as it was.

She had given up on wishing. She didn't need to anymore. She was happy home in her new world, with her family and her life. And him. This place, this reminder, was just a cruel joke.

And she was lost in it.

For being lost, she wasn't doing too bad. In lieu of her work, she had a small sonic device, something Jackie had dubbed the 'sonider' in one of her more creative moments. A sonic cylinder. Not as flashy as a screwdriver, sure, but it worked for her, and it fit nicely in her purse; one could pretend it was lipstick instead of advanced alien technology. After a bit of tampering, she found it worked well at turning on the orange lights, which made her feel a little better about being stuck in the dark labyrinth. What Jackie would say now, if she could see where Rose's work had taken her this time...

A noise stopped her from continuing her reflection. A roar.

Rose looked around sharply. That beast...it was in the building, in the maze...

But not with her. Straining, she could hear the sound of a woman screaming in protest, of another roar...coming from the floor.

No, not the floor. Even in the feeble red light, when she looked down to inspect it, Rose could see tiny holes aligning the ground. A speaker of some sort, projecting sound from somewhere else in the maze to her own room.

_"...but no, not in the building made entirely of metal and perfect for sonification. Stupid Time Lord!" _she heard a woman say to herself, angrily. _"Now what?"_

"What else?" Rose murmured at the tiny holes, more to herself than to the woman. "You're gonna do what you do best: you're gonna save the Doctor." She stood up. "And I'm gonna help."

Amy. That woman, she was called Amy, Rose was pretty sure, if she heard right back by the Tardis. Amy and...Ron? Rhys? Rory? That last one seemed right.

She was going to save them all, because that's what a companion did. Even if she had to go through every dark room of this building, she was going to find them, and get them back to the outside and to the Tardis, and then she was going to find a way home.

* * *

Time passed. She wasn't sure how much. She moved from room to room at a reckless speed, her sonic device assisting her. There had been no sign of human or alien, friendly or not.

Finally, in what felt like the hundredth room, she heard the speaker again. Amy seemed annoyed...actually, she sounded a little like Rose thought she would in the same occasion. _"I've just gone from dark to darker to who knows what comes next, and I've gone in a circle?"_

Without thinking, Rose smiled and spoke. "Open Space."

_"What?"_

The Scottish woman's voice was clear...and seemed directed at Rose. She could...could she hear her? "You asked what came next. Open space. Nothing's darker…or more beautiful," the blonde woman said, trying to keep excitement from her voice.

_"Who's there?"_

Amy _could _hear her. And...though this was impossible, though the rooms seemed not to let light or sound pass through one to the other, the voice sounded...it sounded as though it were coming from the room opposite the speakers...

As she started working on opening that wall, she decided to answer. "Oh, I'm nobody. Not in this world, anyway. Nor in your world. Not anymore."

Amy didn't seem pleased with this response. _"Are you going to answer me in more than just riddles? Or can I go back to getting lost?"_

"I know who you are. Amy Pond. Wife to Rory Pond, or Williams. Traveling with a man—an alien, a Time Lord—known as the Doctor."

_"How do you know that?"_

It seemed her assumption about Amy and Rory-she got the name correct-being married was valid. "Easy. You talk very loudly. And I've heard it all before anyway."

And, with that statement, and not a moment too soon, the wall gave way and opened. Rose stepped through.

Amy Pond was waiting.

"Who are you?"

Without being able to stop a large grin from alighting her face, the girl who travelled through space and time and worlds responded. "Rose Tyler."


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I live in America. Doctor Who is British. So I can't own it. Any writing is done for personal amusement, for no monetary or physical compensation.  
**

**Note: Reviews aren't illegal, you know. I can see who reads this...I'm a ninja! No, but I can see everyone who puts this on the 'Follow' or 'Favorite' list, and, well, that's quite a few of you. Many thanks for that one reviewer! Now the rest of you, pretty please? Tell me if it's good or bad, what you want to happen, what you don't want to happen...**

**I had a wonderful idea a moment ago. Besides the fact that I finally figured out what actually is happening in this story (I have a bad guy! And a plot! And a creepy philosophical moment coming up! Be afraid or excited or both!), I decided that I'll include an epilogue-like chapter. Or two. The second of which will contain a reference to this new series, series 8...can anyone guess what I'll do?**

**Author's Note: And, once again, we're back to Rory. He has a wonderfully skeptical tone that I love to employ, but the action will start really picking up in the next few chapters.**

* * *

_"Hold on…so there __is __a room up there?" Rory asked, squinting. The ceiling had evaporated into a glass-like material; above, Rory could see a new set of lights and a white ceiling._

_The Doctor grinned. "Yes, there is. Now, how about giving me a boost?" he asked, pointing at a hatch in the ceiling to the right…a hatch that hadn't been present in the actual lit room._

* * *

"Now we've got it! Now we're getting somewhere!" The Doctor exclaimed, rubbing his hands together as he looked down between two forks in the tunnels.

"You said five minutes ago. And ten minutes before that..." Rory muttered.

"You know, you should work on your snide comments, Roricus. I can hear you perfectly well from where I'm standing..."

"Crouching."

"Ah, excuse me, 'crouching,'" the Doctor responded, rolling his eyes and then choosing to go down the left ventilation pathway.

They had been walking. Up in the ventilation shaft. Which, Rory, would admit, was like another set of rooms, these ones without doors and with a bright, white light instead of a dying reddish glow. But the ceiling was about eight centimeters too short, and, thus, they had to bend down ever so slightly-just enough to annoy them-to walk along.

To be honest, Rory thought he'd rather have enjoyed staying on the bottom floor, rather than traversing this mysterious area. At least down there his back didn't hurt.

"How much farther?" he asked, as innocently as he could, when they came upon another crossroads, this one with four perpendicular paths. The top floor seemed to be filled with long, twisting hallways, not that he had any idea where they were leading toward.

"I told you, I can't get a distance reading on this thing."

"What is that thing, exactly?"

"You were there when I made it!"

"You were speaking too quickly! And throwing random rubber bands all over the place!"

The Time Lord seemed a little embarrassed. "Yes, well, I picked them all up in the end." He shook his head. "But you should have been paying attention. Amy would have been."

"And Amy would be hitting you right now," Rory reminded him.

The Doctor looked like he was about to argue, but quickly thought better of it. "I think I'll give her the benefit of the doubt just this once. This is a...a...a Melovian Cartascope!" He brandished a strange device, made, Rory was ninety percent positive, entirely out of rubberbands, one old battery, and the front frame of an empty watch.

"Really?"

"Erm...well, I do think I saw one like this in the central market in Meloviganz once, but...the point, Rory, is that it will work almost as well as if it were the real thing."

"And how would a Melodramatic Cartacopter thing work, if we had one?"

"I told you this already! Can't you listen?" Rory glared. "Fine, fine...but don't think I'm not going to have a talk with your wife about you. A Cartascope is like a magnet, but it's entirely attracted to energy."

With a flourish of his hand, the Doctor started walking down the middle path. "In easier terms, Rory, it's taking us to the power source of this place. However, I can't see how much further we have to go."

That sounded like what the Doctor had said earlier. Rory had remembered it-he wasn't as dim as the Doctor liked to make out-but he had noticed a common theme in their travels with the alien: he didn't always tell the truth. And, when he did, he barely ever told everything that they probably should have been told. Like the fact that there was a wormhole-like crack that stole one's existence if entered. Or the fact that he had kissed his wife.

But this time, the Doctor's explanation held. Rory breathed a sigh of relief; it was a lot easier to trust the Doctor than to try to condemn him for lying. "Can't you make something that would just lead to Amy? Through the Tardis key, or through body heat, or something?"

"Do you really think I could do that?"

Mr. Williams Pond answered truthfully. "Yes."

"...thanks. I think. But even if I did do that, what would be the fun?"

"...I'd have my wife back. You're not the least bit worried, are you?"

The Doctor didn't pause at the next intersection; instead, he plowed straight through the left-most path. White light stayed consistent. "I am, just a tad. But we're up here, which I'm sure whatever trapped us wasn't expecting. We have the upper hand. Literally."

At that moment, something appeared in front of them, in their path.

A door. A bright, metal door, complete with a pleasant handle. If handles could be pleasant. Rory had been starting to miss seeing common handles...

The two men exchanged a look; both faces were set in determination. Without another quip, the Doctor pocketed the Cartoscope, took a firm grasp of the door handle, and twisted.

The door opened silently, without a whisper of a squeak. Or maybe it did squeak, and that trite noise was lost in the ruckus that broke over them.

Screams. Cries. Laughter.

Noise. Noise, that had been in the woods, outside the Tardis, outside the building.

It had originated here.

Clutching their ears, the Doctor and Rory passed through the first real doorway they had seen in a long time. Inside, as if to contrast the chaos of the noise, was an eerily orderly sight. Metal cases, bright lights; on the far wall, a large, blank screen. The noise didn't seem to have an originating point. The ceiling, for some reason, was higher; they were able to walk without bending, they could stretch their arms upward and only barely touch the ceiling, if they so desired.

As they got further in, the noise grew louder, but clearer. Words could be heard among the screams and the cries. People calling out for someone lost, a girl crying as she comforted a friend, two children giggling in embarrassment. Every time one of these sounds became understandable, it would be replaced by the next.

This was chaos, but, in a strange way, it was ecstasy to listen. It was loud, but at the same time, Rory had a feeling that it could be much, much louder. He wasn't sure he wanted to be there when that happened.

"Can we leave?" he shouted at the Doctor, unsure if his friend could hear him over this cacophony. But the Doctor seemed to get the message; after a quick run around the room, and apparently not discovering anything, he left the way they had entered.

Back in the silence of the hall, both let out a sigh of relief. "What was that?" Rory gasped, pointing at the room. With the door closed, the sound was once again impossible to hear.

"I've...I've got an idea. But before I test it, I want to find Amy, and then figure out who's running this place."

"I like that plan."

"Oh, that's not a plan, Rory," the Doctor said, looking with unveiled distress at his sonic screwdriver. "It's a goal. I would have a really good plan, but the sonic screwdriver is so close to out of power...it has enough for one last flicker, but then we're on our own."

"So now it can't even screw in screws?"

"Hah hah, very funny for an ancient Roman."

"Doctor?" Rory was looking at the ground. "Does it have enough to make this floor see-through?" He remembered a little earlier, when they had first come up to this top floor, and the Doctor had made the floor transparent.

"Well, yes. Why this floor?"

"Because I thought I heard something. From below us."

"Nonsense. There's nothing..." The sound came again. A rough thumping came from directly below. "...below us..."

With a tilt of his head, the Doctor gingerly gripped the sonic screwdriver and pointed it determinedly at the ground. An electronic buzzing filled the air as its green light flashed; after a couple of seconds, it stopped completely, the last of its charge completely gone.

But it had managed to make most of the floor transparent. And, through the invisible floor beneath them, there came to view a darker room, illuminated with red light and grey walls. But that wasn't all that was visible.

Below were two people, one of which he was ninety-three percent positive was his wife.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: Not yet. More likely than not, never.**

**Quick note: I know where this is going! That shouldn't excite me so, but it does! Seriously, though, review, pretty please. I know you're reading this...ninja skills!...and I would appreciate a little more feedback. I'm trying to keep the mystery going, but I have no idea what I'm doing well and what I'm doing horribly wrong...just say 'hello,' at least. I could use a few more 'hello's in my life.**

**Note: As you know quite well by now, each chapter follows a different character. This chapter is back to Amy Pond.**

* * *

_And, with that statement, and not a moment too soon, the wall gave way and opened. Rose stepped through._

_ Amy Pond was waiting._

* * *

"I hate walls."

The other woman looked at Amy inquisitively. "I wonder why," she said, a hint of sarcasm hitting her voice.

The norm. Amy was, once again, crossing from room to room. It was faster now, with Rose and her special sonic device-Amy had grinned widely when she had learned that this sonic device was almost fully charged. They merely had to enter a room, point the special 'Sonider' with a certain accuracy to turn on the light, point it at a wall to open a door, and step through to the next room.

Amy was beyond bored, and she was growing more annoyed by the second. Walls were horrible inventions. They were completely unnecessary. Argue for privacy? She'd take the lack thereof any day than see another set of walls without any doors.

"So. Which way now?"

"It's your turn to choose."

Amy raised her eyebrows. "No! Last time I did it, we found a dead end!" She wasn't quite sure how there could be a dead end; after all, even if they were to find themselves in a corner, there would be one door-wall-that would open. If each wall opened. Which Amy was starting to highly doubt.

"So you don't like trying your luck at all?"

"No. I just think your luck holds better. You arrived here from...what, a parallel world?"

The blonde seemed thoughtful. "I'm not sure of that."

"But you think so?" Rose nodded. "Then you're more sure of how you got here than I am."

Sighing, Rose tapped her sonic cylinder against her palm. "And how does my arriving here have to do with luck?"

"Didn't you say that you were stuck there?" Another nod, this time a bit more quickly, more firmly. "Then you'd have to be extremely fortunate to get out of that place."

Both women sighed at the same time; they glared at each other for a second, before slightly chuckling. Rose pointed her Sonider at a random wall and pressed down, allowing it to shine a calm electronic buzzing and a pink light-maybe Amy would find a way to get River to change the sonic screwdriver to emit that pink instead of the green it usually did, just to see how the Doctor would react. After several seconds the wall in question opened. The two women stepped through without hesitation.

"Okay. Okay. Calm. Yep. Calm," Amy muttered to herself, trying to keep from hitting something-particularly her foot against the wall, which she was sure she'd regret later. "Rose? Can we get a new plan? Pretty please?"

"If you have one, feel free to share. I'm all ears," she said as the light flickered on above them.

"Why do I have to come up with the plan?" the redhead groaned.

Rose blinked a few times. "Well, my plan was to just continue until we found something. It's worked so far. Other than that...I have no ideas. None. It's your turn for a plan."

Oh. She was so getting back at Amy's previous statement. Amy opened her mouth to protest, then closed it quickly. "This is oddly familiar..." she muttered, looking around. "Just like before..."

Rose leaned against a wall, making herself comfortable. "You do realize all the rooms are the exact same, right? You've established that by now, haven't you?"

"Not about the rooms. I mean, the same as when Rory and the Doctor were...taken. Something happened, and we didn't notice, and..."

At the same time, in the same breath, Rose Tyler and Amy Pond looked up at the ceiling. Specifically, at the dim light above them.

"You didn't..." Amy said, looking at the sonider.

Rose shook her head slowly.

"And you didn't...the walls..."

"I didn't touch them until after..." Rose whispered.

They stood straight next to one another, staring above. "Then how..."

Rose completed the question. "...did the lights...come on...?"

The monster again? No...it had kept the room dark. It liked the dark...monsters usually did. Or at least, Amy hoped they did. She didn't like the idea of being scared of sunlight...the dark, she could handle. But if she were to be afraid to leave her room in the bright sunlight...

"Do you think..." Rose started to ask. She only got to start, however, because, the next moment, they were plunged into abject darkness once again. Amy shrieked slightly as a hand grasped her shoulder. "Sshhh...it's just me," Rose whispered, squeezing the shoulder in what could have been a comforting manner. "Give me a second."

The Sonider buzzed and glowed, and the lights flickered back on.

"What do you think happened?" Amy asked, motioning at the ceiling as it shone its reddish tint.

Rose didn't answer. Instead, she looked at the now-steady light, frowning.

If anyone asked her how she felt about Rose Tyler, Amy would, quite honestly, be flabbergasted. She was unsure. And she hated being unsure. She had been sure, back when she was eight years old, that the Doctor would return, that he wasn't just a figment of her imagination. So sure, that she had spent all of her childhood and teenage years waiting, hoping, expecting him to return in that wobbly blue box.

She was sure about Rory. Her husband. He had waited for her for centuries, waited and watched-she had forgotten he existed, and he still had loved her. Yes, she was certain about Rory Williams Pond.

But Rose Tyler...she was unsure what she thought of this newcomer, this stranger. She was friendly, all smiles and rosy cheeks when they first met. She seemed to know things that she couldn't possibly...things about travel through time and space. She had claimed that she knew the Doctor, once upon a time, before Amy had known him. And, when she discussed the Doctor-which, surprisingly, wasn't often-she got a far-away look in her eyes, as if she were remembering something, or someone.

But-and this was the thing that confused Amy most of all-she was a woman. She smiled and cracked jokes and teased and taunted, she grew silent and moody, she grew frustrated. She was a human girl, just like her, and seemed just as uncertain about their predicament as she herself was. And Amy didn't know if she should be comforting or being comforted. Rose knew more than she told-sometimes, she would open her mouth to say something, a glint of some emotion crossing her face, only to bite her lip and look down, as if afraid of saying the wrong thing.

And that indecision was what made Amy Pond so unsure of who, exactly, Rose Tyler was. Amy knew the Doctor traveled with other companions in his past. She had tricked him into showing her pictures of all of them. Maybe, one of those photos was this girl in front of her.

Amy blinked. And blinked again. "The light turned on...and then turned off..."

Rose nodded, still deep in thought; she didn't appear to want to be disturbed.

However, Amy felt inclined to interrupt her. "What if...that light up there. What if that's not the only thing up there?" Amy asked, crossing her arms. Something had to take the blame. If it had to be the horrible ceiling, then so be it.

Rose seemed intrigued. She glanced at Amy, a coy smile crossing her face. "I knew he chose you for a reason." There was no need for her to state who 'he' was. "Give me a lift, would you?" she asked, pocketing the Sonider.

Putting her hands in a cupped position, the redhead allowed the other to step up, toward the ceiling. She grunted; when had she last had to do this? Ever? But if her hunch were correct...

Raised so she could reach the grey ceiling, Rose started to tap the hard shell above her. The taps grew more and more ferocious, until Rose and Amy were smiling. "It's hollow!" Rose called down. "You can hear the echo from above...it's hollow!"

Amy grinned from ear to ear. She tried to reign in her excitement. "Maybe...maybe it's just a ventilation shaft or something?" she asked, trying to maintain her composure.

Rose shook her head; realizing that Amy couldn't see her in their position, she spoke. "I don't think so. I haven't seen any vents, besides the sound system holes, that would lead up to this." She was also grinning widely. "You're fantastic!" she exclaimed, hitting the roof once more.

Because of her position under the other woman, Amy didn't see what cause her to shriek. All she knew was, the next moment, they were toppled over on the ground.

Looking up, Rose's scream became evident. The ceiling had disappeared. No...not disappeared. It had become invisible, or transparent, or something of that nature. And, directly above them, looking down past the red light with large smiles-oh, how she missed those smiles!-were Rory and the Doctor.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: Matt Smith is leaving. My life is over...I never thought I'd say that, he's not my favorite, but he's grown on me so much! And that leads to the disclaimer: if I owned Doctor Who, Matt leaving wouldn't have been such a shock...**

**Author's Note: I hope I did this justice. Today I graduated from high school, and it's been a completely surreal experience on that stage. And then, home, just writing this...well, like I said, I hope I did it justice. Don't worry, there's more reunion-related scenes coming. And, for those wondering, I am *not* a supporter of Rose/Eleven. This may have hints, if you want to see them, but this isn't a romance fic. Remember that.**

**Note: We're back to Rory. Oh, how I love Rory.**

* * *

_Below were two people, one of which he was ninety-three percent positive was his wife._

* * *

_The ceiling had disappeared. No...not disappeared. It had become invisible, or transparent, or something of that nature. And, directly above them, looking down past the red light with large smiles-oh, how she missed those smiles!-were Rory and the Doctor._

* * *

It _was _his wife-the glorious Amelia Pond-beneath them. He was now ninety-eight percent certain. That extra two percent was just the off chance that it was a clone, or a hologram, or something else that was inanely science fiction-sounding. After all, anything could happen when traveling through space and time.

But Rory forgot about that two percent of doubt as soon as she smiled up at him. It hadn´t been that long, and they'd been separated before, but still...

Amy.

He looked at the Doctor. "I told you! I..." His voice trailed off when he saw the Doctor's face.

The Time Lord was staring below with a strange expression, one that seemed to be putting distance between himself and the women. He looked-not happy, nor scared or sad, exactly. No. The Doctor looked...haunted.

"Doctor?" he asked, gently, his own smile fading. "Doctor? Are you...are you okay?"

His friend swallowed and met his eyes. That expression...it reminded him of how he had looked at himself when Rory had reappeared from nonexistence as a Roman Centurian in front of the Pandorica. Confused, and disbelieving, and stunned. With just a hint, just the smallest bit, of hope, and a larger bit of fear.

It was an expression Rory didn't like to see, not when his wife was so close. "Doctor? I...what's wrong?" When no answer came, he tried a different approach. "Can we get them up here? Wait...the sonic isn't working anymore, is it? Um...maybe..."

He was at a loss. They were so close. So close! And a stupid transparent floor-or ceiling, depending on what side one was on-was all that stood in the way.

"Rory, Doctor! Rory!" came the faint voice of Amy from below. It was muffled, but he could hear her calling for them. She had gotten up off of the floor, and was staring up at the two, grinning and crying. Beside her, someone else started to stand up. That was when Rory first noticed the other woman.

She was staring at the Doctor, staring harshly, almost accusingly. She, too, looked hopeful and fearful, but she also looked, of all things, a little guilty. Amy jumped and hugged her for a moment before waving excitedly at the men above again.

"Doctor? Who is she?" Rory asked.

He didn't expect an answer. The Doctor had been silent ever since the floor/ceiling had turned see-through; there was nothing to suggest that his demeanor would change now. But, quietly, he heard the alien's voice cut through the quiet of their hallway. "Rose..."

Rose. Like the plant? Was that the blonde woman's name? If it was her name, how did he know it?

Why did Rory care? Amy was so close.

"Can we get this open, please?" Mr. Pond stated as firmly as he could, stomping on the floor.

The Doctor shook his head. "The sonic screwdriver, remember, died," he muttered.

That was an improvement, at least. He actually said a sentence that time; maybe the shock was wearing off. Before Rory was able to ask another question-more likely than not concerning how to decrease the distance between himself and his wife-the Doctor began to speak, a single word.

"How?" It was clear at who the question was aimed.

The other girl shrugged-Rory assumed it was a shrug, it was kind of hard to tell when looking down at the person doing the shrugging. "I've been wondering the same thing," she said, her voice muffled but clear. She hesitated, then spoke again. "Doctor? Is that...is it really you?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yep. Same ol' me. Just..."

"Regenerated, huh?" she asked. Then, with an expression of slight amusement and concern on her face: "Why are you wearing a bow tie?"

Tweaking the bowtie straight, the Doctor looked around innocently. "Bow ties are...I wear a bow tie now."

There was a tense silence, one that Rory would later try to mull over the meaning of. But not then, because just then, one of the walls in the room below slid open.

Amy and Rose jumped and quickly looked over as the darkness of the doorway took view. Rory chanced a glance at the Doctor; he seemed to have regained some of his composition, and was waiting, expectantly, staring at the wall below.

Nothing came out.

"Okay. Now's when things start getting interesting," he murmured, rubbing his hands together. Twirling around a few times before getting his bearings, he spoke loudly. "Reunions later. Right. Amy, Rose, go through that wallway."

"What? Why?" Amy questioned, frowning deeply in suspicion. Rory couldn't blame her.

However, the Doctor seemed to be back to his old self. "Because, Pond, there's nothing there anymore." He gave them a few seconds to let that sink in, then spoke again. "It's herding you."

"Oh, so you want us to be herded, then? What, are we going to be locked up in a pen?" Amy asked, incredulously.

Rose also seemed to be confused. "Can't we just join you up there?" she asked, holding up a metallic...thingy. It started buzzing and glowing pink when she pressed a button.

The Doctor was pleased. "A sonic device! Brilliant! But why pink?" Rory cleared his throat. "The point is, whatever opened that door doesn't know _we're _up here," the Doctor said, motioning to himself and to Rory. "I'd quite like to leave it that way, at least for now. So you two need to do what it wants."

Amy and Rose nodded; Rory couldn't tell who was more confused or annoyed.

"Good. Rose, when you get into a new room, use a low frequency and aim at the ceiling 'til it turns invisible. Rory and I will follow you two that way."

Another nod of agreement. Rose took a step toward the wallway; Amy looked up at the Doctor and Rory. "You two, no doing anything stupid, okay?" she threatened. "Rory, keep him out of trouble. We're not losing each other again."

Rory bit back a chuckle. "See you soon."

With that, Amy followed Rose into the darkness, and Rory and the Doctor waited.

They didn't have to wait long. A few seconds after the two women had disappeared, the floor near where the two males were standing began to fade in color, until they were visible once again. Rory smiled; the Doctor watched. "Another door," he muttered, watching as another wall opened of its own accord. "Something's interested."

Rose and Amy looked up; glancing the Doctor and Rory, they both mimed continuing through opened wallway. The Doctor nodded solemnly; thus, they continued through.

This happened several more times; Rose and Amy would go through into the darkness, only to continue through the next opened door. As the two men followed via transparent ceiling, courtesy of Rose, the destination far from revealed itself. There didn't seem to be any pattern to where the women were being led. Several times, when the next transparency didn't show up immediately, Rory and the Doctor had to run, find an intersection point between several hallways, and split up momentarily, to try to find which direction the ladies had been taken. Then they would have to run back, grab the other, and drag them down, often to return to the original hallway a few wallways later. Neither woman continued to the next door until catching a glimpse of one of the men, but progress was slow, and Rory was sweating and aching from bending after a short while.

But, at some point, about twenty minutes after the escapade deeper into the outpost building began, no doors opened for them below. As always, it was silent, but this silence was filled with a muffled kind of expectancy. Something was going to happen; maybe the mystery would be solved. They waited, the four of them, to be led someplace else, but to no avail. No door opened.

"Well? What now?" Amy asked, sighing heavily. "Did he forget about us?"

The Doctor looked confused, which was never a good sign. A confused Doctor was the most dangerous type, Rory had learned-and the Doctor was plenty dangerous when he was normal and slightly slaphappy and completely ready for whatever was coming.

"I'm...not sure. Surely something should have popped up by now, given a loud roar or something..." he mumbled, casting an accusing glance at the roof above him, as if it were at fault for the antagonist's less-than exemplary performance as of yet.

Rory stretched as best he could with the too-low ceiling. Noticing his discomfort, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. No need to ask twice."

"...I didn't say anything..."

"You were thinking it. Loudly." The alien had a familiar twinkle in his eyes. "Rose? Bring the frequency of the sonic up a few notched, and point it at the upper four corners."

"Like this?"

"Perfect," he responded, waiting patiently. After a moment, he pulled Rory back away from the transparent floor, just before it opened up as the last one, the one they had gone up through, had. "Go ahead. Don't make me tell you twice."

Rory didn't. He jumped down-never had six or seven feet seemed so short-and wrapped his wife into an obliging hug. She jumped at the contact before relaxing and smiling. "This, I've been waiting for."

He heard the Doctor jump down next to him. "A proper reunion, finally. Happy? Shall I get you two smoothies with little umbrellas to celebrate? Actually, I might just do that...those umbrellas are quite nifty..." He stopped as a throat cleared itself behind him.

Rose was staring at him, that expression back on her face. "Doctor."

He took a step forward. "Long time no see...?"

Rory and Amy just watched as the girl closed her eyes and smiled. "It's been a while, huh?"

And that was when the monster showed itself.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: The bane of the universe is Stephen Moffat. Not me. Luckily.**

**Author's Note: This chapter is slightly shorter than usual, but, finally, things are picking up! Actually, I foresee about two or three more real chapters, and then the two epilogues, and this is done!**

**Review? Please? Pretty please? I know you're reading this, really; I can see the traffic on my stories, and there's a significant amount of you. Just say 'hi' and I'll be happy.**

**Note: This chapter follows Amy once again. Don't worry, I'll let Rose narrate next; who should the last real chapter be narrated by?**

* * *

_Rose was staring at him, that expression back on her face. "Doctor."_

_ He took a step forward. "Long time no see...?"_

_ Rory and Amy just watched as the girl closed her eyes and smiled. "It's been a while, huh?"_

_ And that was when the monster showed itself._

* * *

It tried not to. It really did. There was a roar-of disapproval, Amy would have thought, if she wasn't so shocked by the suddenness of the situation. The lights turned off, leaving the room in its pitch black spectacle once again.

But not for long. There was a buzzing-and a grunting from behind...Amy ignored that. The buzzing. It seemed to be...

The lights flicked back on. Amy immediately saw the Doctor gripping Rose's Sonicker, pointing it at the opened ceiling. She would have pondered on those two...but they were both staring in shock behind where Amy and Rory stood.

She felt a chill. Without even having to turn, she knew what was behind her.

She turned anyway.

Blackness. Pitch black, blacker than night, blacker than darkness. Smoky, almost, but silky smooth, its skin glistened as if moist in the light from above. Various wisps were wiggling around it-arms, Amy ascertained-and, while it didn't appear to be touching the ground, there were more tentacle-like limbs moving lazily above the ground, as if it were treading water.

There was no face, no head. There was no place for a mouth to open. But, as Amy took a step back, pulling Rory with her, she heard it chuckle and huff.

"Doctor...what is that thing?" Rose asked. She didn't sound so much frightened as confused; Amy connected with that. When something happened she didn't like, she tended to become confrontational, so as to not show any fear.

Amy and Rory were now side by side with the other two human-okay, one was an alien, but he was humanoid in appearance-in the room. "Not...entirely...sure," the Doctor murmured, looking curiously at the creature. "It can't be."

"What can't it be?" Rory asked.

Instead of answering, the Doctor took a step forward. "Speak," he commanded. "Who and what are you?"

And, to the surprise of the three humans, the creature spoke.

"_We...are...the...laughter," _it said. It was an 'it;' there was no gender to describe it, because each word was a new voice. 'We' was from a deep male, 'are' from a high-pitched woman, 'the' from a terse-sounding man, and 'laughter' from a child's scared voice. It was disconcerting; it reminded Amy of science-fiction shows with killer robots with wonky voice boxes, but this was different. The voices didn't connect as they should, but they sounded distinctly real, not emulated.

It continued in this manner of voice-changing. _"We...are...the...cries...and...the...screams...of ...the...dark...We...are...greetings...and...farew ells...and...hope...and...despair...and...we...are ...all...that...ever...made...sound...the...rain.. .the...wind...the...falling...leaf..."_

It was poetic. Just what they needed, a poetic dark blobby monster.

But it didn't seem to be attacking them. It seemed disoriented; it kept on flinching, perhaps bothered by the light, bright overhead.

"Are you the Silence?" the Doctor asked, leaning forward slightly.

The creature stopped talking for a moment, as if in thought. Then the voices came again. _"We...once...were...silent...and...we...can...be.. .silent...if...we...so...choose..."_

"But are you _the _Silence?" the Doctor asked, louder, interrupting it...them...the voices.

It seemed to consider this for a moment. _"We...are...not...The...Silence...We...are...the.. .Voices...all...voices...every...voice."_

The last word was from a terrified girl; Amy shivered.

The Doctor nodded, once. "Then who works the rooms upstairs? You can't, can you?"

However, the creature...the Voices...seemed to be finished with the conversations. One, two, three of its glossy black tentacles moved forward, toward them.

"Oh, come on, we were having such a nice chat!" the Time Lord complained. The Voices didn't stop moving; and now, instead of speaking, it was letting off other noises, sobs and laughter and gasps and sighs.

"Doctor?"

"Okay, my name isn't a question word! Why does it always become one?" he asked Rory, who had spoken.

Rory shirked back. Amy, instead, stepped forward, crossing her arms. "Doctor, you don't like this place, do you?"

"Really? What gave you that impression?" he asked sarcastically. Amy glared. With a cock of her head, she motioned for the Doctor to do something.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Okay. Yes. Um." He appeared to be thinking rapidly. And, while he was thinking, Amy was sad to see the creature inching closer and closer. It seemed more tired than before-not that it had actually appeared tired before-but speaking to them, finding the words among all of the voices, seemed to have sapped it of its energy. It approached them warily; every now and then a tentacle would shoot forward, a little closer, testing the air around it. When one got too close to Rory, Amy slapped it away.

"Can we fight it?" Rose asked, biting her lip. That sounded like a good plan to Amy.

However, the Doctor shook his head. "I don't think so. It's strong; it carried Rory and myself away as if we were lighter than sacks of celery." Amy mouthed 'celery' at Rose, questioning the Doctor's word choice; the other girl shook her head and shrugged in amusement. "And it's fast. It's just unsure how to respond in this light."

"So, if it were dark again, it would be able to grab us immediately?" Rory asked, frowning. The Doctor looked at him and nodded.

"Probably."

Luckily, the lights didn't appear to be in danger of going out again. Whatever the Doctor done with Rose's sonic device seemed to be working. But that still left the creature slowly feeling its way toward them. It had to be blind. The light would be uncomfortable against it, unknown...especially the brighter light from beyond the ceiling, unlike the red light that had been in every room previously.

"We need to...to..." the Doctor muttered, looking around. The group backed up as one of the tentacles came exceedingly close.

It was Rory who made the decision. Without a word, he cupped his hands together, nodded at the ceiling and at Amy, and put them low enough for her to step into.

Amy frowned. "How will that help us?"

Rory shook his head. "No idea. But it's better than just standing her and being grabbed, right?"

So, with a quick grin, Amy pulled herself up, onto the ceiling. Rose, then the Doctor, and then the three of them pulling Rory up. Another grab of the Sonider, and the ceiling-now the floor-of that room below was closing up again. The creature seemed to realize what was happening right at that moment; it reached up, but it was too slow.

And, Amy was sure that would have been the end of it, if it hadn't started screaming. It made that same awful sound that they had heard back by the Tardis, and then by the entrance to this maze of rooms. The sound that had scared them away, and drawn them closer.

Had it been shepherding them?

But the Voices starting screaming; not just screaming, but laughing and crying, every sound in the universe, in every universe, right beneath them. Amy clutched her ears. The lights started to flicker overhead. Gusts of winds came from underneath, as if the transparent ceiling/floor wasn't there at all.

Down the hallway, a door slowly opened.


	13. Chapter 13

**_Disclaimer:_ If I owned Doctor Who, I wouldn't need to work so hard to get scholarship money for college, now would I?  
**

**Author's Note: Three more chapters! Be excited! And please review...I'm worried that my only readers are the Silence; after all, I see the numbers add up, but I don't hear from you or remember anything about you...hint, hint...  
**

**Note: This follows Rose, as promised. Chapter 14 will follow Rory for the final turn of events, and then the two epilogues will follow...well, that's the mystery, isn't it?!**

* * *

_The lights started to flicker overhead. Gusts of winds came from underneath, as if the transparent ceiling/floor wasn't there at all._

_ Down the hallway, a door slowly opened._

* * *

Rose shivered as the door creaked open. Too much was happening, too much she didn't understand...and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to understand everything. She didn't think she'd ever want this, but she wanted it just the same: she wanted to be home.

And, as strange as it felt, home was now Pete's World.

The Doctor was here, that was true, and she wanted to talk to him, but she missed her own version, and she missed the Metacrisis version she had come to know. She missed her mother, and her parallel father, and her younger brother. She missed her familiar world. This place was interesting, but it wasn't familiar-and this didn't feel like traveling with the Doctor normally did.

If this was what travelling with the Doctor felt like now-cold and dark and terrifying-Rose wasn't sure she wanted to travel with him.

That was a lie, part of her told herself, but she quieted that part, hid it away. She's worry about her conflicting opinions later. Right then, something stepped out of the door.

And that something looked...it looked like a man.

The Doctor strutted forward, his face set in determination. Rory and Amy grabbed hands tighter and followed. Rose was about to clutch her own hands to her chest when Amy extended her own free hand to her. Sending the ginger woman a smile of gratitude, Rose took the offered hand in her own. In that chain, with Rory leading, they followed the Time Lord.

The figure in the doorway motioned for them to follow, then it disappeared back into that mysterious room. Ahead, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver, tossing it around a few times before pointing it at the flickering lights. He slowly put it away when nothing changed-after all, it wasn't working.

Rose took out her Sonider and pressed down; the lights stopped flickering. She was sure the Doctor muttered, "Not fair," but that might have been her imagination.

When they reached the room, he turned to look at each of them, a shy smile alighting his face. "Well, time to figure this thing out!" he said quietly, rubbing his hands together.

Amy was the one who responded first. "Then can we go to Rio?"

"I second that request," Rory added.

The Doctor looked at Rose. "Ready?"

"Always." And, with that, the Doctor took her hand and led the way through the door.

There was silence for a moment: Rose couldn't hear anything, not even her sudden gasp of breath at the realization. Then the room, white walls, metallic cases, a large projector screen on the opposite wall; and, besides the physical belongings, there was the sound.

Whatever the creature had been doing, this was so much _more_.

This was laughter, and shouting, and crying, and voices, so many voices, but it was also explosions, and symphonies, and every child who had tried to squeak on an instrument, every footstep in the light and in the dark, every shift of the ocean, every gust of wind. Every sound every produced, anywhere, in all time and space-that was what was in the room.

And it sounded heavenly. There was a rhythm to it, a pattern, something Rose couldn't quite distinguish...there was a beat, but it was changing, constantly changing. Whatever it was, the different sounds harmonized together, throbbing gently, hurting, yes, too loud, yes, but it would be impossible to ask this sound to be quieter, or louder, or anything at all but what it was.

And then, as soon as it had started, the sound...the wonderful assortment of noise and harmony...stopped abruptly. Rose felt Amy's hand on her own jerk at the loss; to her right, the Doctor remained motionless. He was staring at something, standing in front of the screen.

The man.

It had to be a man; that was the only word Rose had to describe him. He looked humanoid, at the very least, with no odd appendages or strange skin color or slits for eyes. He looked normal. He looked like the sort of person she'd see down the street in London, and perhaps she had.

He smiled and spoke, raising an arm in salutation. "Greetings. I think it best we talk without the Cacophony interrupting."

His voice was normal, like any other man's voice could be. Rose was sure she heard it somewhere before, much as she felt she recognized him.

"And to what do we owe this pleasure?" the Doctor asked, rocking forward on his heels. His expression was one of amusement, and slight irritation.

"Oh, nothing, nothing whatsoever," the man responded, smiling as if he were truly pleased to see them. "I should be the ones thanking you. I've had such a good time, you see."

"Well, we haven't," Amy butted in, glaring at him. "Who are you, miss, and why did you trap us here?"

_Miss_? Rose blinked. Rory looked confused as well, but Amy didn't notice their strange reactions. Her attention was on the man.

"Me? Trap you here?" the man said, mockingly innocent. "If I recall, I didn't make you enter my little labyrinth. You did so willingly."

"Then why did you have that smoke monster thing grab us?" Rory asked suddenly. He blushed when Amy and Rose looked at him.

The man twirled his fingers. "Oh, you're talking about Voices, are you? He was bored, and wanted to play, and...well, you offered such excellent toys..."

"What I want to know," the Doctor said, gently, stopping Amy from starting another tirade, "is how you did all this. You shouldn't be able to, you know."

"Who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do?" he asked simply.

"I'm the Doctor," the Time Lord answered. "And I want an answer."

The man ignored him and started messing with the screen behind him. The Doctor stuck his tongue out at him-a childish gesture that Rose couldn't help but giggle at-before turning to the group.

"Doctor? Who is he?" Rose asked.

"My name is unimportant," the person in question called back without turning. "If you wish to refer to me, simply call me Hollow."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Melodramatic, much?" he asked to himself. Rose frowned in confusion. He started walking around the room, fiddling with metallic sheets, tapping walls and looking around, probably for a clue of some sort, though Rose had a feeling he knew what was going on, and had known since they had seen the Voices.

So she turned to Amy and Rory, the three of them still holding hands. "Amy?"

"What?"

"You called him a 'miss'-why?"

"'Him'? She's a girl," she answered, looking surprised by the question. "What, you think that long brown hair is from a guy?"

"Brown hair?" Rory asked. "He's younger than I am, and he's got black hair and earrings."

Amy turned to Rose. "What do you see, then?"

"Well, he's middle-aged, a bit balding with light hair...I dunno, like any bloke off the street."

"I thought she looked like any girl near my house."

"...he looks like a patient at the hospital..."

The three turned to the fourth companion at the same time. "Doctor?"

"My name is not a question; stop using it as one. And, yes, you each see it a different way. It's a perception filter," he answered, now fiddling with a random switch in the wall that didn't appear to be connected to anything.

"So...we each perceive it as...a random person?" Amy asked, letting go of Rose and Rory to cross her arms.

"Nope," the Doctor called back. "Each person sees it as the most regular thing they could imagine. A dog would see it as another dog. You see it as a person, any person from the street, that you might have noticed but never really paid attention to."

"Why? Why would a filter be on?" Rory questioned. It seemed a valid argument to Rose.

"Yeah. What's the point? He...it's...not worried about us doing our own thing here, is it?" she said, glancing at him.

The man...what she saw as a man...waved an arm happily at her, still facing the screened wall. "Oh, do whatever your little heart desires. It's of no interest to me."

The Doctor stopped exploring the room; apparently, he had seen all he had cared to see. "No interest? Why not?"

"You can't do anything to stop me."

"And what are we supposed to stop? You said it: you're Hollow, you don't really exist. You're just words and a bit of anomaly that makes it corpeal. What could you possibly do?"

"This," he said simply, and pulled the screen up a centimeter. The cacophony started again, as suddenly as it had the last time, only now the melody was too strong, it hurt, it wasn't beautiful...Rose clutched her ears and sank to the floor, she could feel Rory and Amy doing the same, but she couldn't see, her eyes were clenched shut as if that would help distill the madness of the sound...

And then there was silence.


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: I might be just as good at procrastination as Russell T. Davies is, but I'm not him. Sorry.**

**Author's Note: And this, my friends, is the end. Okay, there are two epilogues, but this is the last real chapter. I tried to explain most things finally; keep in mind that most of the plot and explanation came once I sat down to write this. Even to the end, I had no idea where this was going. I don't think that's a bad thing, though. I got to learn what would happen around when you readers learned. Anything that doesn't make sense will hopefully be explained in the epilogues; please ask questions so I know what I should mention and solve!**

**Note: Chapter 14 follows good ol' Rory for the last time. We started with Rory, we officially end with Rory.**

* * *

_"You can't do anything to stop me."_

_ "And what are we supposed to stop? You said it: you're Hollow, you don't really exist. You're just words and a bit of anomaly that makes it corporeal. What could you possibly do?"_

_ "This," he said simply, and pulled the screen up a centimeter. The cacophony started again, as suddenly as it had the last time, only now the melody was too strong, it hurt, it wasn't beautiful...Rose clutched her ears and sank to the floor, she could feel Rory and Amy doing the same, but she couldn't see, her eyes were clenched shut as if that would help distill the madness of the sound..._

_ And then there was silence._

* * *

After the crazed assortment of noise, the silence was louder than noise could have been.

Rory looked up.

Hollow was standing still, his hands still on the screen. He looked confused. Rory was too, as a matter of fact.

He tried to speak, but couldn't. Maybe it was because of something in the room, something to do with the Noise beforehand, but it might have been a simple unwillingness to break the Silence that now filled the entire world.

The Doctor was standing, twiddling with his sonic screwdriver, flipping it in his hands. He didn't look up.

The end of the sonic screwdriver was glowing, although it didn't make the standard buzzing sound.

Slowly, Rory stood himself up, then helped his wife and Rose to their feet. They both looked shaken, but resolute-determined to understand. Rory didn't think he really wanted to understand; he wanted out of there.

Then something broke the silence.

"_What...is...the...meaning...of...this?" _The Voices, in their dark glory, had meandered into the room. A baby's squeal, a woman's terrified shout, a whisper...

The Doctor didn't look up. "You've gone too far. You know that, don't you?" he said, quietly, still fiddling with his screwdriver.

"_We...have...done...nothing...wrong...we...have...m erely...taken...what...was...ours..."_

"But it wasn't yours!" the Time Lord shouted. The shout seemed to make the monster shrink back for a moment, seemed to make the room seem even more quiet than it was before. His voice quieted. "They weren't yours to take, were they?"

"Doctor?" Rose was looking at the Voices, an odd expression on her face, as if she understood something that she hadn't before. "Doctor, did it...it stole those voices, didn't it? From people?"

He didn't answer; instead, he caught his screwdriver and clenched it tightly. That was answer enough.

"How...how can it do that?" Rory asked, finding his voice at last. "How can you _steal _voices?"

"_We...didn't...steal..." _A young man's; a grunting worker's; an enraged woman's. "_We...took...what...was...ours..."_

"Weren't you listening? Or are you only voices and not capable of comprehending me?" The Doctor's voice grew louder. "They weren't yours to take."

Amy glared at the still man in front of the screen, then at the blackness writhing in the doorway. "Doctor. Explain. Now."

"He-" The Doctor pointed at Hollow, "-he isn't a human. He isn't even real. Not anymore. He's hollow; he's just a shell with a perception filter."

"What's inside the shell, then?" Rose questioned.

"An idea. A stupid little concept that humans and Slitheens and Daleks and every race that ever existed thinks of at one point-Silence. Peace and quiet."

Rory would argue that, if what he had heard about Daleks was true, they didn't exactly take to peace, but right then wasn't the time for smart remarks. "So...the idea...what, grew? Became sentient?" The Doctor nodded; Rory blinked. "How is that possible?"

"Oh, Rory the Roman, anything's possible. Psychic technology, glitched nanobots, the Reapers of Quison...there are a hundred ways it could become real." The Doctor turned off his screwdriver for a moment; Hollow started to raise an arm. The Doctor flicked it on again, and the man...the idea?...stopped, still as before. "Of course, this isn't the true ideal. This is a mistake."

"_We...are...not...a...mistake...we...were...called. ..into...being...we...were...the...dream...of...sl eepless...nights...for...quiet...for...silence..." _The last word was spoken by a soothing male.

"But people don't really want silence. No. No creature does. It's too frightening, isn't it?" The Doctor finally looked up, at the Voices. "Anything can happen in the stillness. Those born deaf know no other life, they get by just fine, they ought to be commended, but the average man on the street? He might say he's scared of nothing, or maybe of lightning or wars, but he's lying. What's more terrifying than silence, darkness, and the unknown?"

"_We..."_

Amy cut it off before it got started again. "So, what, it just takes people's voices?"

"It takes any sound. Rory, remember that room we were put in, when we were captured?"

Rory blinked and nodded. "Yeah...with that pedestal thing..."

"That 'pedestal thing' was a generator. Fancy design, that, meant to be soothing for the victim, meant to draw them over."

The Voices sighed as a hundred different people. "_We...collect...sounds...we...draw...the...curious. ..in...and...we...take...what...is...ours."_

"To achieve the Silence," the Doctor said, glaring at the creature, "it needs to take sound away. To block light, you simply cover your eyes. Smell? Plug your nose. But hearing? Even if you cover your ears, something always leaks through. So you wanted to go for the source, didn't you?"

"But...that's impossible. Sound never stops," Rose muttered. "What happened to the people taken here?"

"_They...were...no...longer...necessary..."_

"But...this still doesn't make sense," Rory said. "Why is there both Hollow and this thing? And why collect voices and sounds when the rest of the world continues to make noise?"

"There are two beings, Rory, because the concept was too big. Hollow here is empty, hollow, quite literally...he was silent, but he's only one thing that was silent. The rest of the world wasn't. So he needed Voices to collect for him. The perception filter gives him a voice to communicate, but it isn't his voice; it's someone else's.

"And, as for the second question, the concept is flawed. It's childish, thinking silence will solve a problem, so it collects sounds like a child collects toys and shiny objects. And, because the concept is flawed, glitched, even, it can't realize that it isn't doing anything but harm."

That made sense, in a strange, messed-up way. But that usually was how things worked with the Doctor: Rory himself had been erased from existence only to come back as a Roman Centurion. He still wasn't entirely sure how that had worked out.

_"We...will...take...your...voices...as...well...we ...brought...you...four...here...to...collect..."_

"Then why aren't we collected yet?" It was Amy who asked this. She had crossed her arms, and was taking turns glaring at the black creature and at Hollow.

_"He...is...interfering...he...must...be...stopped. ..must...be...collected..."_

The Doctor smiled a cheeky grin. "Doctor...your screwdriver...I thought it was out of power..." Rory said, half to himself, finally realizing that it really was glowing like it normally did.

"It's charging right now. I found a power switch when I was searching the room and I quickly changed some wires so the energy would go to this good ol' thing. That's why the cacophony stopped."

"So...so long as this is charging, Hollow can't do anything?" Rose asked, a small grin on her face.

"But what about that creep over there?" Amy asked, pointing.

The Voices, waving its dark tentacles around, was moving toward them, slowly but surely.

"Er...well, I have one good idea..." the Doctor muttered. "On the count of three...one...two...three!"

And the four of them started running. Rory dodged past the Voices; he pulled his wife away just as a tentacle reached for her. Rose vaulted over one of the limbs, leaping through the door, the Doctor close behind her.

They ran through the hallway; when they reached the open floor they had come up through, the Doctor jumped down, so the rest followed suit.

"What are we doing?!" Amy shouted as they started to run in the direction they had come, through the assortment of still-open doors.

"We're running. I thought that was obvious, Pond."

"Doctor." Amy gave him a chiding frown.

"Okay, okay. I didn't just charge the sonic when we were up there. I stopped the flow of ideas from reaching those two. Stopped the mental support from empowering them."

A crash from behind. Even though Rory couldn't see through the doorways they had passed-they were still pitch black-he could guess that the Voices were chasing them now. It was the only thing that seemed to make sound through the doors.

"What will happen?" Rose asked.

"With any luck, this world will start unraveling. I just don't want us to be inside it when that process gets too far." The Doctor stopped running, looking around. There were two open doors in the room they had just entered. He ran a hand through his hair. "This is cheating!"

"Wait!" Amy cried. "This way!" She pointed to the ground, where a little red arrow pointed through one of the doors.

"Is that your lipstick?" Rory asked, making a face at his wife.

She gave him a crazed look. "It's hasn't been my best day, okay?"

However, the Doctor went and hugged her quickly. "Good job, Pond!" With a smile, he led the way through the door, and the three companions followed.

Rory had to admire his wife. She had left an easy-to-follow train. With her lipstick. Rory made a mental note to buy her a new stick of it once they got back to England. Within ten minutes, they were back at the room that Amy said they had been in when the monster had captured Rory and the Doctor.

The problem was, now they had no more of a trail to follow to get out of the building. There were three wallways open: the one they had just entered through, the one the monster had taken them through, and the one the three of them had originally come through when they had first explored the room.

And they couldn't remember which door through which they had first come.

And the creature was still following them. It was a distance away, but nevertheless it was coming.

It was Rose that realized it. It was she who mentioned that the entrance to the outpost itself was north, and that therefore they would have to go north eventually to get out. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to find the direction; north was the only door that wasn't open.

"Then we go east," Rose said simply. "South is where the monster took you, and it won't cross paths, I shouldn't think. And we came in through the west wall."

The Doctor gave a grin at the logic and off they went.

And, before Rory could really understand it, they had found their way outside.

Sunlight. Rory never thought he'd miss the sun as much as he did. At least when he had been guarding the Pandorica, there had been windows, and he had stepped outside for brief intervals to get some air.

Amy through her arms around him, smiling. "I never thought we'd get out of there!"

"What, you doubted me? Shame, Pond," the Doctor said, grinning. Amy rolled her eyes before enveloping him in a hug as well.

Behind the three of them, Rose cleared her throat. "Well...I'd better get going, then."

The Doctor looked at her sadly. "It was...nice to see you again. How are things...there?"

She smiled in return. "Fine. John's adjusting well, Tony's always asking him questions. Mum and Dad have been travelling around the country, and John and I are planning to go abroad soon."

"A vacation?"

She gave him a wry smile. "More like chasing down aliens around the world. We're kept busy with Torchwood."

"Are...are you and him..."

She smiled slightly. Then, without warning, she hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Doctor. Even if you aren't the one I remember."

He was stiff for a moment before hugging her back. "Rose Tyler. You always turn up, don't you?"

"Would you have it any other way?"

The Doctor just gave a cheeky grin. "You'd better get going. Say hi to everyone for me."

"Will do," Rose responded.

And, still hugging the Doctor, she disappeared from view.

"...Doctor? Are you...are you okay?" Amy asked gently.

Standing up straight, he flashed her a small grin. "Just dandy." He looked around. "We'd better get going. We're not out of the woods yet. Literally."

As they ran back to the Tardis, things were changing. Sounds started coming from all directions, random sounds; every now and then they heard footsteps from behind, but that only made them run all the faster.

And the world was dismantling. Rory could see that now; the tops of the trees were turning a faded grey color, the horizon was darkening, the sun wasn't casting as much light as it once had. Eventually the footsteps stopped, disappeared as well, but that only made the Doctor push them harder.

When they reached the Tardis, the sky was almost black.

They entered. The Doctor pressed a few buttons. The Tardis took to flying.

"It's done now, right?" Amy asked, holding onto a railing as the time machine jolted through time and space. "That world is gone?"

The Doctor fiddled with a few switches, then looked at his screen. "Yep. Of course, it might appear again; people have such silly thoughts, wanting pure and utter silence...but this incarnation of the idea is gone."

"Doctor, you've never wished for silence before?" Rory asked, innocently.

The Doctor looked at him. "Oh, no. I've wished for it more than anyone else, I should imagine."

"Where did Rose go?"

"Back to her own world. She must have been called through a rift; it should be closed now." He didn't appear to want to talk about it any more.

"Doctor?" Amy asked.

He looked up from the console.

"Rio?"

He grinned. "Might as well."


	15. Chapter 15: An Epilogue

**Disclaimer: I'm not involved in Doctor Who. If I were, I probably wouldn't always want to hit Moffat every episode.**

**Author's Note: Epilogue #1. I'm trying to leave things open for whatever happens in the Fiftieth. Remember, this whole things started before we even knew who/what the Silence were, so a lot is left unexplained...this is the DW universe, I'm pretty sure it'll be forgiving if I bend some rules around. Please review; tell me what you liked/disliked in this story!**

**Note: Say goodbye to Rose Tyler. There is one more chapter, from a new POV, but that's next! (I should write it pretty soon...)**

* * *

The rush of traffic. Of people shouting and laughing and crying.

There was a light drizzle, but Rose Tyler didn't mind. She may have crying, but the rain made it harder to tell.

London.

Why was she crying? She was home. She should be happy that the last experience was over. It hadn't been fun, being chased, being lost...seeing him as someone new, someone unfamiliar...

Her cell phone rang. She took it out, in the wet, not really caring if something happened to it. It was waterproof, anyway.

"Rose?"

It was him.

"Rose, are you there? I'm not sure what happened, but we've been detecting some strange energy over by where you are. I'm coming; I've tried calling you for the past few hours, but you haven't responded; your mother's going frantic..." the voice quieted down. "Rose?"

She stared at the phone for a moment, not thinking, just staring; when that didn't work, she allowed herself to start talking. "I...I saw..._him_. But he regenerated again, and..." She couldn't finish.

Silence on the other end for a moment. Then: "Stay put. I'm almost there."

By the time he arrived, she had gotten a hold of herself. But one look at him, unruly hair, fitted suit, stupid long coat that wasn't the same as the original...

They hugged. They didn't need to say anything, because it was all obvious; none of it needed to be said.

He wasn't the same, but he was hers.

Later that evening, she told him everything, guided by his prompting. He was the perfect listener, asking questions when something confused him, being solemn when she first saw the Tardis, smiling in delight at her partnership with Amy Pond. And, when the tale was told-to the best of her understanding-he gave her a few moments before he started talking.

"The Voices probably drew you in because of the Tardis' psychic circuit," he said, looking around as he tried to rationalize. Rose listened, interested. "The Tardis would have sent out a distress call-just something simple, to alert former occupants that it was being dragged away someplace."

"But why me? Why not...I dunno, Martha, or Sarah Jane?" Rose asked.

He smirked. "Well, you do have more experience world-hopping, if that counts."

"But...this world was supposed to be blocked off."

"Yes," he responded, suddenly looking solemn. "It was supposed to be. I'll have to look into that." He gave her a half-smile. "We'll do some research in the morning, all right?"

Rose nodded, taking a sip of tea. "Do you wish you could have come?"

He blinked, and was silent for a few moments. "Nah. Too much pressure-and what if I hadn't liked the new regeneration? Imagine me getting into an argument with myself! It's happened before..."

Laughing, Rose nudged him with her foot. "That, I'd like to see. The Doctor against the Doctor."

"One day, perhaps," he replied. "Until then..."

"Let's keep this world safe?"

A quirky grin. "Fantastic."


	16. Chapter 16: Another Epilogue

**Disclaimer: There's a new Doctor! Eek! This isn't really a disclaimer, but still. Excited/terrified!**

**Author's Note: Please don't kill me. Really. This is a very harsh chapter, I feel horrible about the end, I really do. But it had to happen. If you really hate this part, you don't need to count it, I just wanted to test a Muse that I had ages ago...**

**On a different note, this is officially the end. After years of waiting and sporadic updates, you can say goodbye to this story. Nothing turned out like I expected (original planning had called for the Metacrisis to accompany Rose and explore with Amy, with even a scene from River at some point. Hah. That never even made it to a Word Document...) I hope you enjoyed this all!**

**Note: Epilogue part 2 follows...no. Not telling. Guess. And see if you got it correct.**

* * *

She wasn't sure why she was here. She wasn't supposed to be here.

No, that was a lie. This was where she had to be. This time, this place, for...for some reason or other. She put a hand to her head. She couldn't remember _why _she was here, only that she had to be.

But...that didn't make sense either.

In the woods nearby, there was a strange sound, something almost indescribable...fading in and out, changing pitch, almost wheezing. And then, to her right, a blue box-if she could call it that, since it was much bigger than any other blue box she had ever seen-appeared.

She had the strangest feeling, as though she had seen it before...

As the door opened, she hid herself from the three strangers. Something was telling her to stay around, but not to be seen. There was a voice in her head. There wasn't supposed to be a voice in her head, was there? It was soothing her, telling her what to do.

While she mulled over her confusion, several things happened at once. Several sounds neared: footsteps, then an explosion of noise. The three that had left the blue box-how had they fit in that small box anyway?-seemed to dislike the ominous noise (she couldn't really blame them), but then, the one with the bow tie smiled and led them away. Into the forest.

She was about to approach the box-the voice in her head seemed to be telling her to do that-when a blonde woman appeared, looking longingly at the mysterious object. The girl ducked back into her bush and hid, waiting while the other slowly left, and then waited a bit more.

Finally, she approached the blue box. 'Police Telephone Box,' it said.

There was something vaguely familiar about this, but the voice told her not to worry about it; she had a duty.

When the cacophony that had came by earlier when the other three had first landed returned, she knew what she had to do. And she wished she didn't.

She stood in front of the Tardis-that was its name, wasn't it?

The creature, a dark mass of flailing tentacles, approached her.

"Stop," she heard herself call out, the words almost unbidden. "You can't touch her." Because the Tardis was a female, obviously.

The thing stopped and looked at her, in what could have been amusement. _"And...who...are...you...to...stop...us...?"_ It asked in a myriad of voices.

The girl lifted her head and stared straight at it. She knew that she had to distract it for a few moments, to give the Doctor time. Because that was the man with the bow tie's name. The Doctor. "I am Clara Oswin Oswald, and I'm the Doctor's protector."

And then she closed her eyes as the darkness grew closer.


End file.
